Anna Cates
Foiled
Ploys uncoil, rattle into sordid reality.
Stars sink in the muck pond’s midnight stink,
where toads gloat, cold and dark, and old trees
creak how demons goad the wayward on.
Electric charge tingles, lifts dusky locks,
the chill burning like the moon’s white fire.
A rose briar forces her blood,
and lightning disperses her whispers.
And so, the hex curdles in her voice, an ache.
His eyes close. He doses, a Samson, a warrior,
a candle snuffed out, her final revenge,
relentless as death.
And did he give grass its good green look
that she should pity him now, feel remorse?
The pittances he plopped onto her naked
gut, gouged out of his careless gift?
No, for he consorted with another. And yet,
Canaanite pillars crumble in her soul.
How talon-grasped, her heart.
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Dr. Anna Cates teaches college and graduate-level writing, literature, and education online. She has published a variety of books (poetry, fiction, and drama) through www.cyberwit.net, prolificpress.com, redmoonpress.com, and wipfandstock.com. Her full-length poetry collection Love in the Time of Covid won an Illumination Book Award. She resides in Wilmington, Ohio with her beautiful kitty, Fifi.
Author’s Comments/Backstory: “Foiled” was influenced by my love of fairy tales and biblical literature (the Bible). Many of my poems are fairy tale rewrites or allude to fairy tales or the Bible. I made deliberate attempts to include many sound devices in the poem. My purpose as the writer was for the sound devices to appeal to the audience as much as they appeal to me.
Editor’s Notes: Image of Crumbling Canaanite pillars (by wixel)