by Anne Champion
If you want to glimpse the underworld, you need look no further
than Poseidon’s deep sea, where anglerfish, nicknamed sea devils,
engage in sexual parasitism. When mating, males fuse their bodies
with females, connecting through bloodstreams & tissues.
In Hades’ realm, a man trapped in a quicksand of hurt will latch
onto you too, a sexual appendage. It’s the opposite of a phantom limb:
you’ll wish to rid yourself of him like a conjoined twin
in search of a surgeon, but every expert takes one look
at how his trauma protrudes from you like a tumor
& shakes their head sorrowfully. When a man like Hades
chooses you, it’s fatal. There’s no way to remove him
without disemboweling yourself. When a man like Hades
fuses to you, you have no idea where he ends & you begin.
Anne Champion is the author of six poetry collections. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poets Prize recipient, a 2016 Best of the Net winner, a Douglas Preston Travel Grant recipient, and a Barbara Deming Memorial Grant recipient. She received her MFA in poetry from Emerson College.
