A plague of gods have given us a bad name
us half-betweeners, shadowfill and moonlighters
us naiads and dryads and borrowed starshiners
our dream-shapes malleable and bone-cracked
So we unionized and worded our bylaws
and in fall sent our strike-notice to Olympus:
no princely marriages, no goddaughter dalliances
on streambanks, in groves and sunfucked waves
No more stolen shapes to trick mortal senses
no more swan spunk and golden gorgeous bulls
no more disgrace of our liminal pushes and pulls
and above all, plant no more divine bastards
I am a boygirl thing, an all or neither shape
I am born of warm earth and deeprooted stone
I am carved and pollarded and winterboned
I am my sistersbrothers, claw and branch and hand
So we unite and press our deep-pool magics
an internationale of all things living or only dreaming
a general strike against gods and all other kings
a mass jailbreak from their forms and strictures
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Rick Hollon is a genderqueer author from the American Midwest. Their poems have appeared in ALOCASIA, Delicate Friend, Whale Road Review, Kaleidotrope, and elsewhere. Their debut full-length collection, Time Travel Is Easy, has been published by Farther Trees Press. |