Emily “Venus” Dickinson

 

To appease Loki, Venus agrees to go back to the underworld as a repentant Joya pretending to be too drunk to know her own name. Arriving on a muggy Friday night, she gets the sense she’s heading into something more groundless than quicksand, creepier than walking into a den of snakes. After her supposed cremation, a messenger delivers a package. It suddenly begins speaking––promising vast power to whoever opens it. She throws it down the trash chute. It was from somebody who planned to infiltrate Earth culture by mating with as many human women as possible. The task force writes its report in Mutoscope––you’d’ve thought it was a barfly answering the ring of a rotary phone waving the Patriot Act. In our hands, her face shines like the last window on a rushing train. There are many who clutch their entrails for eternity, unable to vomit up their chains.

 

 

 [Published in The Ongoing Saga I Told My Daughter: Expanded Edition.

© 2016 by Jim Cohn.]