By Alexandra Comus

Look at the sun, it is sinking; the forest revives with the moon’s rise.
Crickets begin their long vigil; a crisp, dreamlike air that awakens
primeval fey in the twilight; their shapes melting out from the gnarled oak
toward shadows dancing, contrasting bark bathed in ambrosial firelight.
Nearing the center, a drum-beat quickens its warlike concussions; forms
brushing swiftly past bushes, gripped in the frenzied elisions pitched,
virtuosic from flute-girls’ melodies winding from pan-pipes;
circumlocuting a droned note; beguiling with their pretensions.
See now the laurel of vine leaves woven like snakes through his wild hair, head
thrown back as he carouses ’round a charred stump like an altar. One of
them carries the Thyrsus, pine topped with maddening honey as yet
another leaps nimbly, holding precarious the goblet full to the brim with
the black wine lurching; its scent wafts and beckons. Clear through the
tree-line a muted bleating cuts through; now approaches tied fast, a
kid—but a yearling—horns gilded, adorned with brooches. Into the circle
they fling it, lunging like demons upon it 
eating the flesh of their young god; greedily drinking his lifeblood.

Alexandra Comus received the 2025 Margaret Weymouth Jackson Award in Creative Writing for this poem.