The eighth blessing
Issue two: poem by CSE Cooney
you came, you built a castle in my woods. I was wary; were you welcome? you cut the green thorn, planted your fields. I withdrew behind my walls. the streams you strewed with runoff: your dyes, your tanners’ filth, your paper-pulp waste, the filth of your beasts and of your dead. I walked farther, drew from upriver, or from my well. your babies wailed, kept me up at night. I stuffed my ears with beeswax, hummed myself to sleep. you climbed into my garden, stole my harvest. I went hungry that winter. you broke all the spindles in the land. my fingers, transparent as icicles, spun not a skein (nothing to spin, nothing to spin it on). I sold off the last fruits of my cellar: a barrel of apples, sweet and wrinkled. you ate one bad apple, choked, slept a while, woke, called for a scapegoat. called for the apple-seller. you dragged her from her garden, through the thorn. you set her to dancing in red-iron shoes. the birds were strange that spring, their pinions ashen, their beaks like embers. they ate everything— including your eyes, including your daughters’ eyes. perhaps they were my friends. perhaps they used to live aloft in my orchards before you burnt those too. now you throw a party to bless another baby with the most harrowing expectations: beauty, grace, dance, wit, song, kindness— as if just being born were not gift and curse enough. you do not invite me. I send a spider to weave a web beneath your sheets. I send an elf to knot your hair (and leave her comb stuck there). I tie a goat beneath your postered bed, and ‘witch the thorn to drape it ‘round with curtains green. I bind your left shoe tight with ribbons three, that you might never bear this child. that your child might grow and grow in you as you lay, slug-a-bed, let to do nothing. until you call for your spindle, and spin for pure boredom. until you call for seeds and plant trees beside your curtained bed. while always, inside you, the baby ages, fills you to capacity. till she strains to bursting, standing just beneath your skin. (so do the gods gestate their children feeding them in darkness, in wisdom until they are old enough to choose— do I stay? or do I brave the world?) that is my blessing for this child. till then, may she grow like the green thorn, as the beeswax melts from my ears in this perfect silence. as tender cotyledons spike apple-ish from ash, and the birds eat spiders from my hand, and my iron shoes cool on the windowpane.
CSE Cooney (she/her) is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author: for her novel Saint Death’s daughter, and for her collection Bone swans, stories. Other work includes The twice-drowned saint, Dark breakers, and Desdemona and the deep. As a voice actor, Cooney has narrated over 120 audiobooks, as well as short fiction for podcasts such as Uncanny magazine, Beneath ceaseless skies, Tales to terrify, and Podcastle. In March 2023, she produced her collaborative sci-fi musical, Ballads from a distant star, at New York City’s Arts on Site. (Find her other music at Bandcamp under Brimstone Rhine.) Forthcoming from Outland Entertainment in 2024 is the GM-less TTRPG Negocios infernales (“the Spanish Inquisition … INTERRUPTED by aliens!”), which she co-designed with her husband, writer and game-designer Carlos Hernandez. Find her website blog and where to buy her books via her Linktree or try “csecooney” on various social media platforms.
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Loved this! Thank you for giving it a home.