Cauldron Anthology Issue 3: Year 1 Collection Cauldron Anthology Year One Issue FINAL 1.17.18 | Page 28

The Eyes Blinking in the Woods
Claire Francis
She resides in riddles,
tongue hungrily slinking along cracked, carnivorous lips
and saliva sinking into a pelt like the gold she supposedly guards.
Her paws pad through throats like a parade,
patronizing and paralyzing and proud of the trappings she once commanded.
She crawls, coughing, from her crypt –
ticking and ticking through the boredom of time.
She is wily and wild and winged,
and she impresses herself onto triangular tombs in shrewd self-preservation;
statuesque and royal and ridiculously self-assured.
She is the myth’s siren darling,
hair tripping over birdlike bones
and bloodied teeth sliced by a child’s smile.
She clings to a sea-stained map with no slashed “x,” slit edges rusty-colored and useless.
Solitude cloaks a mermaid’s wake,
feathered with a selfish hunger
and veiled by wanderlust’s shroud.
Her garbled tongue will lure you close enough to taste her breath
and she will crumple in her palm your will and words
for once
like a fistful of melting sand,
unapologetic and ruthless and constantly searching.
Her hair is tangled lace,
eyelashes like spidery ink brushed on sickly pallor.
Her wings are matted and dark and sharp,
a spiked halo stark against the watercolor of dawn.
Her talons
latticed and rutted and hooked
clutch her prey like a coffin’s embrace.
That’s a harpy’s duty, after all.
Her lips purse and her ears muffle their whimpered pleas,
mean-spirited and selfish and eternally preoccupied.
She is the perpetual villain of Greek tragedy,
cheekbones carved of marble and eyes liquid and nails like serrated teeth.