Amytis

I first saw her walking,
the folds of her ink blue dress
turning the earth;

moving among the garden like a buoy
despite the weight of Nebuchadnezzar
on her eyebrows.

She shakes him off with a wink.

She could teach my dog physics.
She could diagnose a tumor, right
down to the vertebrae.

Her voice pulled through the honey
caverns of a pomegranate arrives
and whispers —

“He will see the sunlight as a wave,” she says.
“The moon will be a mirror.
IT WIIt will be thoracic when it comes.”

On the far wall,
the lily sheds its child’s sheet,
to stretch beneath the dying light
of a red sea.

C.W. Bryan is a student at Georgia State University. He lives in Atlanta, GA where he writes poetry, nonfiction and short fiction. He is currently writing his weekly series, Poetry is Plagiarism, with Sam Kilkenny at poetryispretentious.com. His debut chapbook Celine: An Elegy was published with Bottlecap Press in 2023. His work can be found in Beaver Magazine, Door is a Jar Magazine, Eunoia Review, Scavengers and elsewhere.

Instagram: @poetry_is_pretentious Twitter: @pretentious_mag Website: poetryispretentious.com