Sphinx Women

Abstract

Sphinx Women Anna Graeme (bio) Sphinx women find jobs on the streetas women who sell fruit and bright clothesand handmade jewelry. They smile with sharp teeth.They have angry, lovely eyes that burn likedark honey. They cover their breasts nowand keep their paws hidden under heavy skirtsand shawls. Handsewn and bleeding throughages of bronze, of analog clocks. They keep riddlesand wisdoms off their tongues. It would all be drownedout anyway. Always with the steel and the sound of the rail,charging like the Cretan Bull, beneath them.Sphinx women pay child support ten times overfor lion cubs already gone. They talk under brickledges in city rain, in hushed barbed tongues. No,years of kings and heroes weren’t much better. Butat least there had been warm bloodand good, wild words to give. [End Page 42] Anna Graeme ANNA GRAEME is a queer poet living in Ohio. She received an MFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University. Their writing explores the spaces between myth, the natural world, and character-driven narratives. Her work has been featured in journals such as Pleiades, Southern Indiana Review, and others. Much of my work revolves around mythos. I consider these tales to be wondrous, ever-shifting amalgamations of a tool that was at one point used to explain both the world around us as well as the worlds within us. Copyright © 2023 Wayne State University Press