Joanna Koch
THE BURIED KING
“Am I doing this wrong?” Dionysus wrapped in amethyst, stone threaded garments masquerading as wings of feral fishermen. Homeless by a rust colored dumpster, the label is amethyst, regal, in a bottle with a cap the shape of a crown. Kings of cardboard booty and shameless hope fished from a river. “Boy, you better not eat them trout.”
Pollution of angelfish and angelic poisons. What’s an angel but a demon in agnostic disguise? The kid stalks the older man by the quayside, secluded in reeds. Seed-heads match the boy’s hay colored hair. “He’s one of them angels, one of them gonna come for you, Hector. See how he’s stalking? Don’t look him in the eye. Don’t turn.”
The child alights, boy in transition, wings woven of reeds. “Gimme one of them fishes,” he says.
His sepia teeth have a slime about them that shows he never learned to brush. They look too old for a child, for a boy, for most men. Most men perform wealth, whereas Dionysus Hector keeps his trap shut and picks up what tourists leave behind on the godforsaken sandbar, other side of the bay. Better fishing here under the highway, hidden in the reeds, free from sea police and starwatching dandies. In winter, he’d rather freeze.
“Gimme one, mister.” The little creep creeps closer, needy beggar demon slinking in to launch attack. Atonal fission splits Hector’s decision making process. Howling in Latin, delirious in the act, for many languages have been born and died within his breast; Hector Dionysus hooks the angel-boy’s lips like threading bait.
Two shocked snails hump the wire shard. Hector holds a finger up to demonstrate the virtue of silence to his catch. Angels tossed out of heaven left to rot by an obscene god too busy spinning demons out of cake mix. “Damn shame, the waste of it all,” Hector says. A damned world full of damned souls, old and new, and then this kid comes along just begging for it with big eyes. Now here’s a drink a man can savor.
The kid sees where Hector’s looking, wants to tell him he’ll do anything anyways, mister; can’t and wonders how he’s going to eat with his mouth hooked shut. Wonders how bad his lips are fucked up.
He can taste the blood. It’s nice, really, in comparison to the brown sourness of his disintegrating gums. The man’s on him, quick. Taste of metal, similar to blood.
Lepidoptera regicide, his mother ate the monarchs for their latex flavored poison. How many caterpillars does it take to get high? Being pregnant with him tasted like butterfly wings. The only thing the boy remembers she showed him is how wings turn to powder on your tongue. Killing in the name of what? Proof she didn’t exist, illiterate prophecy, not one but three positions negated in worshipful posture. If you create the form, some mad god will fill it with substance. Unless they forget, too busy with the business of gospel annihilation, of seizures, of flight; they forget, and the boy learns to wait.
Hector Dionysus could be anyone from behind. The blood is nice, and the warmth of the bum’s rough hands is nice. It’s cold on the river. Ocean, lake, whatever. The kid accepts precedent: maenads mistaken into butterflies.
Hector sees nothing in his arms except pale white fish flesh and tangled lines. There’s a Latin word for what’s going to happen next. It’s on the tip of his anchored tongue, a word like poisonous dust that tastes of amethyst, of crushed gems, of meaningless emotions a monster like Dionysus should have outgrown centuries ago.
He skins the fish flesh, buries it before the sea creature weaves reeds into some new camouflage, into ibis wings, into gold more precious than the ashes of kings. Hector Dionysus doubts the rave of the human encounter, attended by shredding maenads. He’s left with a stomach made of sticks and a cascading gullet; a misleading sense of pride in capturing the criminal before the fall. Never trust a centaur in disguise.
Blinded by golden wings, with no other choice in battle, eyes bleed tears as he feasts. As burier of kings, Hector serves a single master, the illicit tradition of temporal decay. He cradles the long-dead angelfish in pathetic disarray.
Sympathy leeches piss from crusty eyes as veritable gospel cetology holds intent on making a raft. A cardboard casket, parts set afloat to be reassembled by goddesses. They do that, deep in the past.
Deep in the shameless hope, Dionysus craps amethyst, hides the stones he’s fished from the river, wears his wings in the shape of a crown. Cardboard colored garments masquerade in liquor. Feral fishermen keep company. Hector goes clayey with a battalion of sea police. Gullet overflowing, kids fished from the river, wanderers amass to prove the accuracy of a corrupt savior’s aquatic myth:
Here is where a child washed up on shore, and here is where the drunk raped and ate his flesh, and here is where no one knew the boy went missing, and here is where the system failed. Here is the wreath of mourning tied in a chokehold of seaweed around the dead boy’s throat.
For all the desires resurrected, Hector’s line tugs, knocking him off balance. A big one, for water born in the ocean will bear witness only so long.
Hooked, the behemoth’s mouth swells. Godly is its maw, opening unto a cavernous hell of burnished teeth. Glorious is its hunger, gorging on the liquor of the sea. Righteous is its belly, vomiting Hector Dionysus who cries out wrong and remade.
“I am vulnerable. I miss you. Am I doing this wrong?”
From lyres, the wanton sea creates kings. Noisome, they wash ashore uncrowned. An army of orphic boys with limbs rubbery and abundant as squid, their squalid sea-smell warns the slugs of approaching salt. Liquid revenge, eyes in every bottle. Amorous amethyst trout, Hector Dionysus vomits himself rightly inside out.