Loisa Fenichell

Prayers for Vagabond

I.

When Achilles fell in love with me I wanted

not to kill myself but die with my stomach

blown straight through in violence of crashing like cars.

Achilles with his hair that sagged like my breasts: our ways

of returning back to this earth. My breasts dragged

across the skin of earth, which is why they bruised

to bone & back, but still this was the only way

I could know how to survive like herds of planets.

II.

I know that my mother loves me even when I

cannot return this love because she will drive

to me at 3 a.m., touch blow light gentle against

my cheeks, then yell at me like the spots festering

white sprays of mucus down my throat.

III.

Picture god’s leap of moon through my mother’s bedroom walls.

I visit my mother & am surprised when she does not strangle me

like the heel of Achilles, who still loves me. How can I

separate him from my mother. There is never music

in my mother’s house. The silence is constant & buzzing

like the headaches that I used to get when I was young

& sitting by cold rolls of saltwater.

IV.

Gold wheat bombards itself through my mother’s kitchen window.

7 a.m. I am only 1 of 2 awake in my mother’s house. The fridge

is shined & opening like the uprising of a new country.

Out the window still rests Achilles & he is teaching me to beg.


Loisa Fenichell is a SUNY Purchase student with a double major in creative writing and literature. She is passionate about Tetris, mythologies, and her phone’s flashlight feature.