Muse

By Sonya Taaffe

12 March 2007

With ink I feathered you, at your fingertips sketched

storm-static and the dust of masks, set crooked all

the haloes of a holy fool to crown you double-tongued

and quicksilver: this hand of faces you dealt yourself

in pasteboard riddles and commedia deadpan, that now

I shuffle like a cadenza to hand back as slant and true

as any con: pick a card, my lovely assistant, any card.

We two only, we know: they are marked all with your name.

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Sonya Taaffe has a confirmed addiction to myth, folklore, and dead languages. Her poem "Matlacihuatl's Gift" shared first place for the 2003 Rhysling Award, and poems and short stories of hers have been been nominated for the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Locus Award, shortlisted for the SLF Fountain Award, and honorably mentioned in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. A respectable amount of her short fiction and poetry can be found in Postcards from the Province of Hyphens and Singing Innocence and Experience. She has also published a chapbook, The Dybbuk in Love, and has stories reprinted in The Best of Not One of Us, Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2006, and Best New Fantasy. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Classics at Yale University. You can learn more about Sonya from her LiveJournal, "Myth Happens".

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