Akoloute (Sequi Me)

By ELIZABETH L. HODGES

Tracing dusty footprints, you can be led
to fornix, to tombs, the circus and bars,
to my lupan, my cell, my earthen bed;
what waits is not secret—see what I are?
I’m not a barmaid, an actor or slave;
I’m not being cursed because I had sinned—
I’m earning my keep in this grisly trade.
For that I am traif, but come along in.
I’ll lead you to places you’ve never had;
to hell in a basket: one bloody as.

Elizabeth L. Hodges was legal counsel for the New Hampshire Judiciary for fourteen years. She founded St. Petersburg Review, an independent international review of contemporary literature, in 2007. Blood Sonnets will be published in November. She lives in New Hampshire.

[Purchase Issue 28 here.] 

Akoloute (Sequi Me)

Related Posts

Black and white image of a bird with a long neck

Dispatch from Marutha Nilam

SAKTHI ARULANANDHAM
With the swiftness and dexterity / of a hawk that pounces upon a chicken / and takes it by force, / the bird craves / snapping up a vast terrain / with its powerful, sharp beak / and flying away with it. // When that turns out to be impossible, / in the heat of its great big sigh, / all the rivers dry up.

Tripas Book Cover

Excerpt from Tripas

BRANDON SOM
One grandmother with Vicks, one with Tiger Balm, rubbed / fires of camphor & mint, old poultices, / into my chest: their palms kneading & wet with salve, / its menthols, to strip the chaff & rattle in a night wheeze. Can you / hear their lullabies?

Blue cover of There is Still Singing in the Afterlife

Four Poems by JinJin Xu

JINJIN XU
my mother, my father. / Her skinny blue wrists, his ear caressing a cigarette. In the beginning, / it is already too late, but there is hunger & no time / to waste. All they need are six hands, three mouths, a clockwork / yearning for locks of their own, windows square & fresh.