Aphelion Issue 301, Volume 28
December 2024 / January 2025
 
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Incantation to Venus

by Theresa C. Gaynord


Ruins and remnants, those sounds of words
that raise hands in daily expressions to the
shining color of sandstone that illuminates
the passerby with a state of mind, rising and
disappearing within everything observable
yet forgotten; the four angels, a distant voice,
holding out their arms to the unpronounceable
name of God,

their great power compelling the spirits of Venus
to obey, ancient in duty, among a frame of
neighboring stars. In the evening, monologues
begin, as a south wind breaks winter into pieces,
inciting memory with desire; a radiant melancholy
flash of familiar warmth filled in light; bones of her
bones, flesh of her flesh. Startling visions course
through feminine and masculine energies,

in the midst of fallen snow, where treeless hills
intrude quietly upon all the living and dead. Her
soul descends into his agitated dreams, an act of
surrender to the carnal curves and splendor that arch
the night with deep tenderness, holding the sorrow
and grief in her bosom with the wisdom of swift
motion. Mind and heart, drunk with passion, reek
the incense of sacrifice,

as bodies become vestibules to the golden twilight
of worship, gilded before the forces of primeval air.
Fire rims the round of the silver moon, cool in sleepy
whispers that stretch up to creatures of other worlds;
white flower petals float down streams with courage
before sinking into the lowest, deepest banks, as
companions of misfortune implore the assistance of
the gods.

A flask of rum offered; lone ship to the song of
ritual mantra, provision to the eloquence of gloom
that sweeps past prophetic images with no sense of
obligation, patterned in ceremonial time to the delicate
touches of affluence that embark within the sky, repairing
and restoring the dawn with the craft of the wise where
formations shoot restlessly with every turn of the wind,
and the anemone springs silhouettes of ecstasy over
a river of red water.


© 2021 Theresa C. Gaynord

Theresa likes to write about matters of self-inflection and personal experiences. She likes to write about matters of an out-of body, out-of-mind state, as well as subjects of an idyllic, pagan nature and the occult. Theresa writes horror, as well as concrete gritty and realistic dramas. Theresa is said to be witch and a poet. (within the horror writing community).

Find more by Theresa C. Gaynord in the Author Index.

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