Self Portrait as Thetis on the Lap of Zeus

Because I am your favorite,
have worn my hair long, have oiled
every crease of my face and body
until it glows like a stone in the bottom
of the river, I am river in the way men like
to take a river to a shoreline somewhere
far off like Florida and claim it. No one
has ever stepped here. It’s mine.
I can let you think you’re the first,
if it helps, can lay my wrists on either side
of your face so you smell what I’ve carried
all this way to say, it’s me: your shining water
girl, silver footed and low as a catfish. It’s me,
naked at the waist, I drape my breasts
on your thigh, supplicate. Remember, father,
I was born before the earth was born, carried
in elements combining over that vast dark,
when my hand formed into a scythe,
uneclipsed half-moon shape and you
rose out of the new earth and called me
daughter. How willing I was to bend down,
to show you the back of my neck, this valley
of gold I wear on my head. I can let you think you came
first, if it helps you imagine an ending
divine and opposite, an ending
like a winged shadow rising.

Sara Moore Wagner is the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award, and the author of the chapbooks Tumbling After (forthcoming from Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022) and Hooked Through (2017). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals including Beloit Poetry Journal, Rhino, Third Coast, Poet Lore, Waxwing, The Cincinnati Review, and Nimrod, among others. She has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart prize, and Best of the Net. Find her at www.saramoorewagner.com.