Libation Bearers by Catherine Allen

Tense and dark-eyed

black-garbed girls 

laden with pitchers

bundles and baskets 

gather among graves

bearing a funeral 

feast for Father.

Now sweet smells mingle, 

rise, while wine 

spills down 

the dark throat

down 

the grave

down.

Until the ground 

slurps and belches. 

Satisfied shadows

lounge round the graveyard.

Still they stay,

those tense girls,

waiting

for parched

ravenous Father

to come crackling 

up from the earth

and consume them.

Catherine Allen is a cultural anthropologist and writer, living in Greenbelt, Maryland. Her publications include poems (Rhino, Anthropology & Humanism), ethnography (The Hold Life Has, Smithsonian Press), creative non-fiction (Foxboy, Univ. Texas Press) and an ethnographic drama (Condor Qatay, Waveland Press).