The HyperTexts

Shannon Winestone

Shannon Winestone is an aspiring poet based in New England. She strives to write poems that are uniformly beautiful, blending ancient with modern and speaking to the human condition. Shannon’s other interests include baking, classical literature, drawing, graphic design, mythology, psychology, and geopolitics. She is also the editor of The New Stylus.



THE DESOLATE CITY

for the children of Gaza

My spirit drifts into a desolate city
That is broken, having no walls.
No children play in its streets.
There is no one left to pity
And nothing more to feel.
The agora’s immersed in gloom,
The homes draped in solitude.
Dust and cobwebs adorn their rooms
That no more resound with laughter’s peals
Or the sweet notes of a song.
Alas, all joy is gone!
It has sunk into an abyss of sorrow
And into it my soul has fallen.



HIDEOUS

Do you have color in your cheeks? I watched
Your lilies singe to a crimson flush, your rose
Recast in bloody shades of Lancaster.
And like a tolling bell, your body swayed
Because they knew you lied, that time you bled
Them dry and said, “I don’t know how they died.”

With every vowel, every consonant,
That tumbled from your mouth, my disgust grew
Like a cancer in the lungs, or a toxic plant.
You tried to mend your quilt with patchwork lies,
Deception woven like a tapestry
With wooden-nickeled affability.
So let your “fringe” unravel, let it go
That you may lie exposed as night draws nigh,
That morning’s light may shine upon your deeds.

You stood there frozen like a startled doe,
Lost in a blank and vacant haze, so still—
Each strand of hair a work of art, your eyes
Pale Ceylon blue sublime. They were the Nile,
And like Parmenio’s son, I sank and drowned
In you. Those pretty fools all sighed and pined,
Cursing the day church floors were swept by lace
(White as the virgin snow, her bridal train),
When to the sound of bagpipes, promises
Were made. Recast in shades of Yorkist woe—
For now I see the pretty fool is me,
And what brought mirth once now is hideous.

I cooked the meals and scrubbed the grimy floor,
Immersing myself in life’s mundane routine.
But then your name came falling from all lips,
Came flooding all my zones, like breaking news,
Just in. Strange thoughts of you invaded me—
The Gog and Magog of my battered brain.
They scaled the walls like mighty men of war—
My galleys sank—ablaze, defeated, swamped.

If you have lit my pyre, if I’m on fire,
Then you must burn and turn to ashes too.
Because it’s not enough that we have read
The same old works of literature—not
Enough that numbers addle both our brains,
That you observe the horns (their height, their breadth),
As I do here in quietness—my thoughts,
Directed more towards the ancient past.
For if you’re frost, then I’m a glowing coal.
If you were Persian, I was surely Greek.

My tears should stain your face instead of mine.
I’d be the victor, not the vanquished one,
Repay Thermopylae with Salamis,
Sip your Assam. Ukrainian grain would fill
My fingers, like an English lord or like
A Russian czar—two lands, two roots of me.
A Lyssa rage, a paralyzing fear,
The voiceless bird inside a gilded cage—
I’d pour my agony upon your soul,
Come flooding all your zones, like breaking news,
Just in. So hideous, like one who loves
The rack, the iron maiden, and the screw.

I cannot be a pillar in your temple.
I hate the standard that you bear, so why
Do you pervade and haunt my every thought?
I rise up from my sleepless bed each night,
Now pacing back and forth, now wishing you...
And yet I deem your tyrant’s dream to be
No better than a menstrual rag. You’d love
The sound of jackboots on our streets, a bust
Of Castro gracing every public square,
A granite Lenin peering down state halls,
A marble Mao directing courts of law,
With Stalin scowling at cathedral doors.
And you’d be there to crown each one with gold—
An acrid taste now left upon my tongue.

It doesn’t matter what you named your son,
Or that He made your root spring from the land
Of crimson maple leaves and from that land
That birthed the guillotine, or that we both
Are wont to linger at the glass. Oh you—
A bleach-stained dress that would no longer do,
No longer do. I swore it with an oath;
I said, “Adieu.” Now, Antinous, I’m through.

My mind a Gaugamela rout—in flight
I left my shield, my mantle, my war-chariot,
My bow; my soldiers bled out on the plain.
My head lay on the pillow; I could feel
You sinking in, dreamt whispered pleas and sighs.
So hideous, as when King David had
To take Bathsheba, like a trophy or
An Ammonite crown. In the evening air
He watched her bathe and brought her to his bed,
Then spilled Uriah’s blood to take her hand.

The wind—I’m jealous of the wind that swept
Her fingers through your hair. I grudge the rain
Because she soaked your clothes and touched your skin—
Elysium of vales and snowy peaks,
Of wild nights, of mooring in a sea
As beautiful as blue-green lakes and hills
Of islands west of Portugal. The place
Where a maelstrom erupts then bliss ignites
To quell the storm, to calm the raging sea.

For seven years complete you drank their blood,
Partook of feasts where man was duly served.
But Sappho’s fingers struck the lyre; she sang
A piper’s song—stirred up to highest treason
My quickened pulse against all reasoning.
Her final strains fade into frenzied haze—
No wild nights, no mooring in your sea!
The wounded voice my scorn; my eyes leak tears
For them, but I would kiss your mouth in secret.
So I can’t meet their gaze, or speak of you
At length, lest someone turn to me and say,
“Do you have color in your cheeks? I watched...”

The HyperTexts