Ardat-lilî

by Jeannelle Ferreira

She wove the woman through the wych-elm;
She kissed the grand duchesses' cooling mouths.
And it was (she says) a century for children,
stacked and red-cheeked,
waiting for her, dressed for winter in a scattering of loam.

She lost her appetite for them.
Now, in your bed, she eats apples,
smearing honey. Between her breasts, (for irony) a ruby
trembles, as if she breathed. The year
turns at sunset, her knee
a sharp hook at your thigh, her fingers
chasing the scrape of her pointed teeth.

Inanna was easy (left her weeping);
modern girls, a brush of your hand
through lightning. She says it and smiles
at the hand-of-Miriam shielding your throat.
(her hands were sand-creased, her hair starless black.)
That's pretty, she tells you
and bends, in the dark of the bedroom, down to drink.

---

Jeannelle Ferreira spends her days editing, believes in ghosts, and will write queer stories until the world doesn't need them any more. She is the author of one novel, a two-mom-family children's book, a handful of short stories, and surprisingly (if you know her from that prosody class in high school), several poems; she has a degree in creative writing from Brandeis University. She lives in Maryland with her wife and daughter. Most recently, her work can be found in Steam-Powered II: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories (Torquere Press) and Stone Telling.