The Lottery, Revisited by Marge Simon

 

This time, I don’t attend. I wait at

my window as Widow Jamison appears,

replete in bombazine. She struts to

the platform, ready to draw a name.

 

Her sons had been unlucky in the draw;

seven years she watched as each was

stoned to death, yet she shed not one tear.

But she still does her hair a certain way

for attendance at another turn of chance,

the lottery in our small New England town.

 

My daughters lie within the ground,

their bruised bodies turned to bones.

Queen of the roost, she thinks she is,

standing so proud in that deadly pulpit.

 

I’ve only one left to offer for the draw—

a son, while hers rot in their graves.

But that’s not what angers me the most.

Had I no faith, I’d cast the first stone,

bury it deep into her pious temple.

 

My son kisses me before he leaves to join

the gathered crowd, a stone in his hand.

 

---

---

Marge Simon is an award-winning poet/writer. Her works have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, New Myths, Bete Noire and four pro anthologies in 2018. She is a multiple Stoker winner and Grand Master Poet of the SF & F Poetry Association.

 

Published 8/15/19