A Spider at the River Styx

By Jacob Bergstresser

It starts with a single thread
extruded
carried by a breeze until it anchors opposite

A teenaged opioid addict implores Charon to accept Apple Pay.
He acquiesces.
She discovers with horror that her parents buried her without her phone.

The web sheet looks random
but it is a complex lattice
and she spins it with tunnels and chambers to hide in.

Coins rarely get placed in graves today.
An endless sea of the dead churns on the near bank of Styx
waiting to cross
unable to cross.
A jowly woman in a red hat berates Charon
that she shouldn't be jostled by that sort
even if everyone dies.

Finally, individual threads descend,
gumfooted lines
anchored to the ground to catch her prey.

A bearded man with a bullet hole in the back of his head,
buried unceremoniously,
has a pocket full of change.
Charon will now take a boatload across if any one person can pay.
The man holds court.
First his friends are out.
Then the men.
Then the women who were not embalmed to be beautiful.
Now he polls them to see which sex acts each will perform
because consent matters to him.

Her web is done. She tips upside down and waits.
There is no prey here
but we must continue the patterns we spun in life.