we found his cherub cheeks bleached
like a sheet flagging surrender in
a field shifting into sand
his chariot—once yawning ambition in
the trophy room—became a mass
of metal netted with nettle
the rest we assumed ripped to ribbons
by the beasts he could never
contain in his ribcage
the lightbulb crowned in sunflowers serving
as a head for his wild white sphynx
believed the sky just good enough
the charioteer is survived by the stars
in his eyes driven into a blue canopy
endless sand & a squire on fire
for lack of a better world, his black sphynx—
all blemish & bitter root—was burned
down to fiddlesticks & feathers we piled
into a cairn how could we, even then, know his
body—whittled with riddles—was
pacing psalms into his grave?
how could we not hear him ply off the lid of his coffin
with palm leaves? how could we not
taste poisoned apples on the wind?
Panika M. C. Dillon is from Fairbanks, AK, Austin, TX. Her work has appeared in Heavy Feather Review, Copper Nickel, The Diagram, Steam Ticket, apt and others. She received an MFA in creative-writing poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and works as a legislative reporter at the Texas Capitol.
