Traci Brimhall, "Via Dolorosa"
We have been telling the story wrong all along, how a king took Philomela's tongue after he had taken her body, and how the gods turned her into a nightingale so she could tell the night of her grief. Even now the streets wait for her lamentation—strays minister to bones abandoned on a stoop, a man sleeps on the ghosts of yesterday's heat, pigeons rest on top of the church and will not stir until they hear music below them. Inside, a woman warms up the organ and sings Via Dolorosa about a Messiah who wanted to save everyone from the wages of pleasure. But how can I keep a man's fingers from my mouth? How can I resist bare trees dervishing on the sidewalk? A woman outside the train station asks, Is there a city underneath this city? I say, Let me tell you a story, and tell her that after Longfellow put out the fire in his wife's dress, after he buried her, after his burns turned to soft pink skin, he translated the Inferno. There is a place deep in the earth for the ravi