Volume IV Archive

Ariana Kelly

Coral

Not without tenderness
did Perseus place
the Gorgon’s head
within the water, cover it
with seaweed and then wash

his hands of blood.
I guess the urgency
was gone—Andromeda’s chains
lay slack against the cliff
while the ocean grew

its inner life, a fragile city
without the growing pains
of graffiti—Amor Perdita,
Lilya 4-eva, and all that.
Someone’s bound

to know this place, where
the hurry of myth leaves us,
lets us smart from received blows,
charitable sun, all stony clarification

of an otherwise chaotic blue.