for Journalist Danny Fenster
There is a myth in Ovid’s Metamorphosis
that is hard to shake. Cassandra bound to rocks
at sea, the seer silenced by Apollo, truth bound
by power, a crag of slate upon the rose-red sea
lashed by a frigid surf, Apollo’s lies tore at her
and his curse, that she not be believed, she saw
the city in ashes and they didn’t believe, city of
cynics and hip assholes lashed her to the rocks
tired of her apocalyptic visions, city of rocks, lash
by lash against the stone, what is a human bone
beneath a human heart, the myth of Cassandra
is hard to shake, as though your arms became
so many tangled branches, your hips of birch,
the tree of you still running to speak the truth
into a broken world, and silenced. Silenced.
The seer, the witness, the reporter imprisoned
About the Poem
Metro Detroit journalist Danny Fenster has been imprisoned in Myanmar for more than two months.
About the Author
Pablo Otavalo is from Cuenca, Ecuador, and now lives and writes in Illinois. A recipient of the 2013 and 2014 Illinois Gwendolyn Brooks Prize, his work has appeared in POETRY, RHINO, Jet Fuel Review, Structo Magazine, No Tender Fences: An Anthology of Immigrant & First-Generation American Poetry, and other publications.
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