Crista Fusaro
Concordia University
Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Quebec, Canada
crista.fusaro@gmail.com

I am here. I am one of them.
On Mount Parnassus, at the shrine of Fame,

Beside the lilac-wilting leaves of her willow tree.
It is the truth. I will confess it elsewhere and I

I will confess it here:
I endeavour to be.

A confession for each of the nine Muses to hear,
A confession for Fame’s beloved ears to hear.

A chant murmured as I consumed the bowels of Helicon,
A well that rushes below to a silent end.

An enchantment to feel,
A chant breathed before I swallowed her sweet-laced ichor.

A celestial ambrosia turned earthbound, waiting for wanting mouths,
A lustrous liquor tending to long-traveled bodies.

Satiated mouths, wet with the river that runs inside her,
And a deeper hunger that persists, waiting to be satisfied.

I, like those with ambitions high, have come,
Sheltering wit and fancy, to declare long-held desire:

all I desire is fame.
An unadorned desire, a five-word desire, but

A desire.
I wish to soothe her reddened cheeks with lyric-inclined hands.

What will make me enough?
What will make me enough for her?

I need the ermine-lined blues to protect me from winter’s crystalline knives,
I need the carnation-rose ribbons secured into billowing sleeves.

I need the fallen feathers that find their fate in falling hair,
I need the feel of pearlescent jewels on soft-warm ears.

I do not confide in the awakened deceased like the men bowed beside me,
I do not summon the non-artists, verse bitter on their non-artistic tongues.

I instead conjure up the ladies who are intimate with the language
I breathe.