The Summoner’s Pact by Ennis Rook Bashe

Of course its unholy glow streaks all the way up: her bargain,
filigree etching creamy thighs
illegible except in battle, when the vultures whirl around her
and her lips pull tight. She limped past
and I caught mine on the curve of her ankle,
beholden like a smeared red handprint on her vulnerable breast.
Young men who’d never killed
traded their dull blunt coinless sinless souls
for kinder pacts. I blurted out as much
the day my white-gold fire crisped the arrow speeding towards her neck:
Unless you slaughtered
twentyscore surrendered enemies
while still in novice robes,
they robbed you blind.
You can read it?  Her voice, hoarse from screaming, yet chocolate rich.
Every line.
She hefted skirts
and I translated implications clause by clause.
Catlike, she watched. It aches at night, in winter. Here.
She slid my hand up into secrets-
for a moment,
hid the words that bound her to his bed

Ennis Rook Bashe is an Elgin and Rhysling Award finalist, TAP New York Writers’ Institute Poetry Prize winner, and HWA Dark Poetry Scholarship-winning poet, novelist, and game designer. Their chapbook Beautiful Malady includes work nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Find more writing and information at Linktree.

© 2025 Ennis Rook Bashe. All rights reserved.