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.