Annunciation: Leda
He shot
through the
window
touched
my fingers
my eyes
combed
my body
with his
wings.
Time
blistered.
The spider
purred
on the wall.
He said Shush
little lamb,
don’t
make noise.
He hid
in the back
of my throat.
Every time
he woke
and beat his
wings,
blood broke
in my mouth.
Helen and Theseus
I watched him lift it
quivering in his right fist.
I was a girl
troubling the bulrushes.
He gripped it
like a fighting millet fish:
stiff and slick,
or so I thought.
I could hear oranges
break from their branches.
I despise helplessness.
Yet men love me
most when I am generous
with my body, quiet
as bones
closed in dirt, immured
beneath a shallow river.
What more
of this story must I give you?
I was blank once.
Io by Water
I might have guided him
a little with my eyes;
my milk
can spilled over; my sweet.
I was dumb as the lamium
below his feet,
stunned.
For days after,
everything I touched
seemed to shrink
away from me.
Don’t ask me how
a breeze becomes hands
under a skirt.
I still dream
of hot bees
dripping from a flat, tight sky
and nesting
in my blood.
He took what he could,
which was everything;
my mind, my mind—
I still feel
a sharp blade
pressed there. I try
to walk myself clean,
but every onyx eye
of every red anemone
is his pupil-
stone: bottomless, bended
over me.
Holli Carrell's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, Blackbird, The Florida Review, Quarterly West, Fugue, and other places. You can find out more at www.holli-carrell.com.