Deborah Brown

 
Mythological

You know when you’re wrong and can’t stop.
Pandora knew not to lift that lid. She’d been warned.

It was the way we slammed that F150.
Just rammed our beaten-up Chevy into it, backed up,
rammed it again, cheering under our breath.

It wasn’t curiosity. No one mattered. Pandora’s eyes
devoured the glowing vase. It shone like a crown of
diamonds, brighter than a miracle. We could have
stopped, maybe, almost hadn’t started. But we
didn't like the kid, didn’t like that he had a
newish red Ford. We were gleeful.

Years later, in bed with a married
boss, legs spread wide on his down comforter,
one of us—call her Judy—felt that same glee,
like Pandora’s unbreakable desire.

Pyrrha, her daughter, also knew it was not
curiosity, nothing that clean, that innocent.

Eventually, we regretted the smashed bed
of the red Ford truck, and some sneaking regret 
seeing the boss’s overworked wife at Target.

We knew disease and death spilled from Pandora’s vase.

This Morning Sank

like a rubber raft punched by a pocketknife
down to the black hollows of Green Lake.
That’s my morning. My knife, too.

Now my dog’s dragging a deer’s leg bone
into the yard.

Dog stares at me for thanks, or praise, or something,
some sort of explanation. That I don’t have, will never have.
Like I can explain killing.

It’s like home sweet home. Father slaps mother,
chases grandparents out with Glock, one sister tears handfuls of hair out of her sister’s head. Brother upstairs playing
with pills.

I’m in the kitchen, mooning over the past with Life Magazine.
A picture of Maria Tallchief, dancer legs
long as a country mile.
 

<<Marc Petersen
 

Victoria Chan >>