Alewives: a Poem

Alewives

You will ask them to make you a dandelion brew:

All of life’s fleeting joys distilled,

Bitterness mellified in witch’s blood;

Or perhaps an ale of tar and molasses, memories

Of traumas past caught

In the viscous juice like malignant insects

Within amber. 

Young girls, grieving widows, single mothers,

Concubines; the deserted and the deserting.

They all brew barley and other machinations, 

Black hats pointed enough to gouge out

The eyes of those who would doubt them.

You will watch them wander the marketplace

Like tinkers or ghosts, 

And you won’t ask where their husbands are 

For you will know they’re married

To the charred cauldrons harnessed around bent backs, 

And to each other.

A guild of tipplers and tapsters;

A coven cackling like moon-drunk crows,

Enshrouded in each other’s

Muscled arms.

Avra Margariti is a queer author and Pushcart-nominated poet with a fondness for the dark and the darling. Avra’s work haunts publications such as Vastarien, Asimov's, Liminality, Arsenika, The Future Fire, Love Letters to Poe, Space and Time, Eye to the Telescope, and Glittership. Avra lives and studies in Athens, Greece. You can find Avra on twitter (@avramargariti).

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