Sonya Taaffe

Antique Water Magic

The last time your reflection drowned,
I dredged you
weeping from the black glass, your face streaming
empty-eyed as bronze rusting under sea.
Your hair trailed ink, spreading like a suicide's pool.
I dreamed of sirens in a tangling mouth of sargasso,
bowing ribs of abalone with strings of white horsehair.
You cried in the tub,
the drain slowly winding your shadow,
your stranded fingertips working their wet to the bone.

Sonya Taaffe's short fiction and poetry can be found in the collections Ghost Signs (Aqueduct Press), A Mayse-Bikhl (Papaveria Press), Postcards from the Province of Hyphens (Prime Books), and Singing Innocence and Experience (Prime Books), and in anthologies including Aliens: Recent Encounters, Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction, The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry, People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase and The Best of Not One of Us. She is currently senior poetry editor at Strange Horizons; she holds master's degrees in Classics from Brandeis and Yale and once named a Kuiper belt object. She lives in Somerville with her husband and two cats.