Allecto and How Great is Our God!

by Casey Epstein-Gross

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allecto, queen of the furies

i want to make myself wild again      let foam
drip from my mouth     run rabid round street corners
a woman possessed has the prettiest eyes or so they say
i can’t much remember how mine looked      but i
imagine it was a green watery type of piercing

it’s been so long since i last bathed      in a college
fountain      drank silky pennies off the floor      swallowed
rusty chlorine by the gallon      oh how i relished the taste!
but now my fingers skim soft wood at café tables      now i
never drink hot coffee without the use of a spoon

sedation is the most agreeable form of sedition      hold my
mouth open with a chopstick like old times      stick that needle
in my gums      you always thought it was strange how i licked
my lips afterwards      i always thought it was strange how much
chemical sleep tasted      of sugarcane and sweet lemon

 

how great is our God!

earlier today chuck told me about this girl
he knew who tripped balls and ate the skin
off the back of her hand. st joseph himself
arrived on gardenia blvd to urge her on, or
so she said. he recalled that she was killed
via electrocution a mere six months later.

dhruv insists mosh pits are nigh spiritual;
the way beads of sweat roll off your arms
and slip onto the backs of unnamed strangers
is the purest form of holy connection found
on our salted heavy earth. heather said she
dropped acid a while back and saw the face

of God on a blank sheet of paper. she traced
the wrinkled lines for hours until she caught
His expression just right. she felt as if He
were too much to be named so she simply
called Him “acidface.” these days she walks
around new york armed with spray can and

sharpie, tagging walls benches signs with
“cidface” “cidface” “cidface” (acidface was
too vulgar, she said, and cid rolls off the tongue
so much nicer.) i hope He appreciates her work
from his soft perch in the trees.