Maria Zoccola

helen of troy is asked to the spring formal

every bird in the sky begged to be my man. each worm in the dirt longed to wife me. when i swam in shallow creeks, leeches encircled my ring finger in black bands. i shimmered with a magic of hair or ankle, some perfection of sex that bent to my neck in powdered down, cutex-sharp at nails and toes, coats of flashing fuchsia frost. rats swarmed from their roofly nests. deer massed in the leaves before my blind and then came the boys, pickup trucks and heavy bass, paper cups to hold brown spit. they snarled and swore and muddied the lawn, they bloodied the lawn, they held each other and rutted in the lawn, sun-scald sweating them dry, undershirts yanked off, rivers of skin like the milk of my own hunger. i took their gifts. i counted them: dolly on vinyl, dolly on cassette, remington bolt-actions and tripods of gold, mud-covered jeeps with half-paid notes, a basket of rags with a cygnet inside. they offered themselves, their mothers’ farms, their fathers’ bread, their bodies new-spun from childhood clay. come down to us, they howled to my window. we’ll pelt you like the forest fox. we’ll strip you clean. we’ll lick you raw. you’ll see why trees lie down for the ax. i listened. i went. i never came back.

Maria Zoccola is a queer southern writer with deep roots in the Mississippi Delta. She has writing degrees from Emory University and Falmouth University. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, the Iowa Review, the Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. Learn more about her work at mariazoccola.com.