Oedipus

This heat scalds the eyes
and shrivels the heart to a stone;
my armor sears my skin
and chafes my thighs raw.

Scars lancing my feet still tingle
like that unscratchable itch in my brain
asking questions that disappear
before I can answer them
before I even hear them,
questions gnawing my brain like maggots
and I nearly remember,
nearly remember.

I sweat blood as the old man approaches on the road
and my groin aches as he speaks,
but I can't hear his voice,
his buzzing locust of a voice,
his biting gnat of a damned voice
though I know he asks me something important,
a question I must hear, must answer.
My fingers twitch toward my sword.
I burn like a brand
and he dies with my smile on his lips.

                         Father, where are you now?

I suddenly recall the Oracle's murmur,
toxic and compelling, slithering darkly
through the dry desert shadows that night
as I drew away in terror:

                         Your mother will dress you in silks,
the Oracle said,
or was it
                         Your lover will dress you in silks?

In terror, I fled my mother's breast
before the sun next bathed us in its false gold.
I know my mother waits yet behind me
but I see her face in the face
of every woman I meet
and I shrink and crawl away
like a hyena from a flame.

The Sphinx crouches smiling before me,
her lion's claws grasping at
the loose sand beneath her,
and gravel drools from her sneering stone lips
as she riddles me in the sunset.
My tongue cold as a ruby, I whisper "Man."
The earth tilts at my word,
and the Sphinx's scream
sends white hot steel through my brain
as she reaches into her own granite breast
and tears out her beating heart,
handing it to me in one gore-soaked paw.

                         Mother, my mother, will you love me again?

As her blood pools thickly around my bare feet,
splashing warm waves around my toes,
gall threatens to spill from my throat.
But I force her pulsing organ between my lips,
sinking my teeth so deep she screams again.
I suddenly, violently shudder and ache
for the woman Creon has promised
and know tonight I'll be stone between her thighs.

I turn back to watch the Sphinx die
with the evening sun, her eyes
twin pools of blood
in her tortured face.
"Mother," I whisper suddenly
in the red night,
but no one answers.









Lisa Lepovetsky has published poetry and fiction in dozens of magazines, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Space and Time, Rose Red Review, and Pacific Review, as well as anthologies such as Grails, The Crow, Palace Corbie, and Death in Dixie. She earned her MFA from Penn State and has published a novel, Shadows on the Bayou. Under the name It’s a Mystery!, she writes and hosts mystery theaters. Lisa has taught for both Penn State and University of Pittsburgh, and lives in Pennsylvania.