Apotropaism
by Sonya Taaffe
ὀσμὴ βροτείων αἱμάτων με προσγελᾷ--Aeschylus, Eumenides 253
On the threshold, I have spelled in pennies and sand,
above the lintel written rowan and wild rose,
a pale stone, a bluest eye, these words of white heather
on a page of rush. Let it burn down to embers.
Let it wash out with rain. Beyond the glass, the storm
rails: black flaws and flint-shot. We will not write it in.
Sonya Taaffe has a confirmed addiction to myth, folklore, and dead languages. Poems and short stories of hers have won the Rhysling Award, been shortlisted for the SLF Fountain Award and the Dwarf Stars Award, and been reprinted in numerous anthologies, including The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase, Best New Romantic Fantasy 2, and The Best of Not One of Us. A respectable amount of her work can be found in Postcards from the Province of Hyphens and Singing Innocence and Experience (Prime Books). She holds master’s degrees in Classics from Brandeis and Yale. She likes to believe that in the course of a poetry cage-match between Sappho and William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Anakreon would take one look at each other and sneak out to the nearest bar, to write sonnets and skolia to one another’s faces.
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