Three EverQuest Poems
April Michelle Bratten
Blissviss understands the cleric is actually poison
isn’t he.
It is not the Medicine that unravels her. She meditates in his pouch straps.
Notice they match her wicker throat. How he threads & then destroys.
She runs years toward the Innoruuk inside her. Flag of blood darkens
spite, crave stony pile watch—craft of her people. She pretends
a wall & destroys the dervish. Hikes another horrific green.
His hands twitch when touched by air. She understands.
The cure won’t ever hold the door open
will he.
Trade from gold hammer to sword. Stamina 55.
Health is a lie.
Blissviss has a favorite meditation
spot—sweet on the burnt bread, about three feet
above ground. The Nektulos Forest screams
its darkness, a devil saunters the grass in bare feet.
Her soft shoe leaves the ground. The sword across
her lap strikes with lightning, penetrates necromancy.
Solo on the field, no fear, three suns and no clouds,
part-time assassin. They say she was born from hate,
that her skin, blue, only glows during a kill.
She likes to watch the skeletons topple down the hill.
Blissviss travels home with her corpse
at her heels. Make it brutal like an empty nest
she sleeps in as a ghost. She follows her own body
as a ghost. A being
too scared to ask the big man for a res. The air, the color
like the inside of a throat and filled
with the sounds of her body bouncing
off rock, limbs plunking hard clumsy but damnit she is finally
going home home home.