Author: Adella Herron
Crescent thorn: white and blinding
pierces the veins of dark space and bleeds the heavens of hot rains
tainting the soil between that which lies silent—
that which lies dead between the Balkan Mountains and the seas—
Thrace:
His paradise palace, his birthplace, he sees Heaven abreast.
Lo the monarchy upon that marble Heaven:
a vengeful father and mother—an idol to spite and jealousy, but
in his insatiable eyes, not much else is there;
a choice between beauty and violence mended into
a shield of bronze and a helm crested in blood.
The helots, the hoplites, the Spartiates:
they imprisoned him in olive vines,
pressed him to their city walls;
never did he flinch or protest.
They fell in the bone dust to their knees
when they brought forth their squirming sacrifice
to the pyre etched with his sobriquet.
He blessed their arrows, their swords, their shields
for they were his and cried his name:
“Ares.”