‘Bacchus, to the Dead Boy’
— Hannah Cohen
You will always be born from the mouths of beasts
I often think about words and words-to-be floating in some endlessness, so discovering Occulum and its Lynchian daydream aesthetic appealed to me. The immediate tension between a named god and mortal supplies the delicious use of language and tone. Despite “dead” being present in the title, immortal humanity is created from lines such as “screams echoed across the mountains” and “memory…like wine into the ground”. Here, the mentions of “darling” is as acrid as it is saccharine. Even the poem’s hanging final line wavers between soothe and jab. ‘Bacchus, to the Dead Boy’ is a promising feat from an equally promising poet, and I look forward to more work that explores the “sugar water … mothers, maggots, and maidens”.