Andromeda sways, bored and naked, arms raised above her sun-ignited mane. Her hands are manacled (lambskin pads the inside cuffs), a fine light chain loops the stony shower rod and drops, true as plumbline, spine, or comet’s tail.
Perseus is late, delayed by some invented mission, some other sobbing sacrifice spread-eagled the convenient crossroads.
And St. George, black-eyed and hollow as a lute, who would rouse himself to bloody battery on her behalf? He lies in the arms of stupor, bicarbonate by the headboard, baby-blue blanket snugged by angels round his muscle-bound blackout.
The dragon, rising from its outpost of cherry trees and Bildungsroman shadows, is a monster of punctuality. One lizard eye on the pollen-blown steppes of Scythia, one angling the Nile from the whisper-chiseled columns of Karnak to the delta’s djinn-pulsed vulva, wingspan a morning’s pilgrimage of dew and fire. Its roar trembles the waves of the middle sea, churning spouts across the lacunae of lost Atlantis:
READY OR NOT ANDROMEDA
HERE I COME ANDROMEDA
TO EAT YOU EAT YOU EAT YOU
ANDROMEDA
That she is the sexy dot, yin-yanged in rose and gold, set mid-parens the coming heroic combat, burnishes Andromeda’s vanity to a neon glister. She shivers boredom down her body, the sun’s slow lick from head to toe. A flea’s caprice on the closing horizon, a whinny from behind, the hooves of Pegasus plowing the humid air.
The fight occurs offstage, echoes overlong around the fissured outcrop, and she scallops and twists to see the outcome, wondering which shadow will top her, by whom she will be eaten.
Perseus stands before her, breathing hard. He clanks off his armor, junks the joins and plates to the ground around him, each curved metallic surface settling into sand, puddling raw dun with blood and froth, the steaming milk from dragon veins. Followed by a moment of mutual appraisal: gratitude, relief, shame, shamelessness, breath steadying, breath taken away, diminishing breakers of fear spilling flush-hot into laughter, then silence, a dragonfly’s chirr, a whipporwill’s inappropriate sorrow over a calm pool of lust.
His stubble grazes her throat, his nose warms her coral ear, a baffle of breath coasts the overslope of her breast, a thumb sweetens her pumping heart, his tongue scoops her vulnerable armpit.
Pegasus paws the ground, snorts a scurry of beetles into horde, skittish at babytalk and laughter. He turns his beautiful head away and in his eyes a dream of dark fields, and apples, scattered ripe across the world.