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Award Winning Poetry - 

2007

Winner of the Spoon River Poetry Review Editors' Prize

The Rape of Chryssipus

She came home bone by bone. First her shin bone, then her skull. In the end, 26 of Molly's bones came home to us. ― Mother of 16-year old Molly Bish, whose remains were found 3 years after she was abducted and murdered in June 2000.

For the rape of Chryssipus, King Laius suffered.
The gods saw what he took -- a young boy's chance

to play in the Nemean Games, to make his offerings
to Zeus, to win his wreath of wild celery leaves, advance

the Greek way: piety, honor, and strength. He raided
their vast heaven, not just a small boy's frame. Their justice

was what Laius came to dread: a son that would take
his mother to bed, a champion of the gods, an Oedipus.

We called on the same gods on your behalf, asked
for their twisted best: disease like a Chimera to eat

your Laius piece by piece; a Harpie who might wrap
her tongue around his neck and play his game of breathing

and not-breathing that he made you play; Medusa's curse in stone;
and a Golden Ram to put you back together bone by bone.

Copyright © 2007 M. B. McLatchey All rights reserved.
Winner of the 2007 Spoon River Poetry Review Editors' Prize.
Published in The Spoon River Poetry Review, Summer/Fall 2007.


Judge's Review

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