they kept him
for the better part of his childhood
in a Mason jar
kept him apart from mother
his mother
with Pollux
his twin
still in her
petrified by midwife Euryale
a limestone fetus suspended not in amniotic fluid
but a solution
a Final Solution
of vinegar.
the child dissolves
and Castor
through his glass partition
reaches out
with tentative, psychic tendrils
to mourn his/their loss
in his own way
but they stave him off
they drive him back
with sirens
“press play”
in hi-fi
as if they could keep him
in a Mason jar
and under their control
through the Scylla and Charybdis
of adolescence

[WC Roberts lives in a mobile home up on Bixby Hill, on land that was once the county dump. The only window looks out on a ragged scarecrow standing in a field of straw and dressed in WC’s own discarded clothes. WC dreams of the desert, of finally getting his first television set, and of ravens. Above all, he writes, and has had poems published in Strange Horizons, Apex, Space & Time Magazine, Mindflights, Aoife’s Kiss, Eternal Haunted Summer, Star*Line, and others.]