Two Poems

Laura Sheahen

With the Bedouins

The venom child heals those
Stung by a scorpion
Pierced by a viper

The venom child
Dark eyes with long lashes
Poison transmuted
Sings in his blood

His spit is salve
His touch draws off fever

In the night
His veins faintly fluoresce

Those who are bitten
Call to him

On unsteady legs
He toddles to sickbeds

This child drank the head of a snake
And the scorpion's tail
Warm with the milk of his mother
Before he was forty days old

The suffering ones
Cut the wound deeper
And let his saliva
Drench the red fire

They wake cured


But wait soon

When his milkteeth make way
When his beard prickles in
He, transmuted

He will bite
He will sting
He will undo the blood

Will cause fever
That cannot be healed

***

Sahara

As the broken-winged bird
Sees first one scorpion
Then four

I thought I was the one who could not fly

Instead I am the sting
The tented legs clicking

Or the sky
Blank and mercy-free

Laura Sheahen's poems have been published in The Dark Horse, Margie, Orbis, The Manhattan Review, Dream Catcher and other magazines. Based in Cambodia, she works for a humanitarian aid agency and travels frequently in Asia and the Middle East.

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