Isis in Light

by Jamie Wasserman

Isis, the Egyptian goddess of Heaven and Earth, continues her search for the disembodied pieces of her lover Osiris in modern Baltimore Listen… Forget Egypt. Forget velvet, scepter, incense, ambrosia. Forget the dark banks of the Nile and the shocked face of the new moon white as a lotus. Forget sandalwood and scarabs. Forget magic. Leave the crumbling pyramids to rot on the soft sand; their broken tombs will remain empty, utterly empty as an upturned hand, a dusty challis. The old gods are dead. There is just this… the yellow sun, part diesel, part light, exhausting itself in its own heat. The cobbled streets of Baltimore; a forgotten port, rusty and stalled like a steel tanker at the mouth of a harbor thicker than love, but impenetrable.