Thor’s Gift To A Child

by Anna Ruiz

If I were a child,
I would be free to discover
my inner Pokemon
alas, I’m too old for new landscapes
to recognize,
besides
all I have at my disposal are these marching
soldiers of time,
hup one two three, hup, one two three!
drill sergeants biting the dust in an ever-expanding desert, carrying
a full metal jacket —
100 pounds of
vicissitudes and fortitudes
regiments in boxed-up metaphors
I learned at the feet of history,
catacombs
and honeycombs sometimes lost,
sometimes melting in the womb of love,
or in the nightmare of its denial.

Gabriel, come blow your horn!

Break down
these walls of isolation and return me to the time
of orange blossoms when knighthood was in flower
and I, a princess banished to the dark tower by
three wicked Norsemen like the Kings of the Orient
each bearing the thunder of Thor
and the sweet song of a siren

must learn to cross my own river of fire.