Interview with Lachesis of the Three Fates by Jordyn Perazzo back to University & College Poetry Prizes
![Interview with Lachesis of the Three Fates after Marcelo Hernandez Castillo The cashier, flicking through channels while I coax yesterday’s sludge into a paper cup, lurches off her stool with a cry. She smacks the remote against her palm once, twice, before stomping off into the recesses of the store mumbling about damned batteries. The coffee maker gives a gurgle I ignore, tremors dismissed beneath the feet of Pompeii. On the screen, a late-night host has cornered one of the reclusive Fates. [Lachesis, silvered, found on the bank of a river garbed in khaki and waders, fly fishing. Across her hands, a length of line.] So how’d you get into the business of divinity? What was your first gig when starting out? mason jar cradled between thighs on the way home, the architecture of the inside comb weeping honey. the beekeeper behind mesh learns the bees’ dance and follows and follows to his own front door. [She casts, shoulders rolling through the motions, wrist twitching to the side to avoid flinging fiber in the face of her seeker. The line skims light and limns the water.] Your sister Clotho works the loom and your sister Atropos the shears. As the one who measures the thread, the allotter of life, do you consider yourself the bridge of the group? the earth’s orbit does not run true: a sphere stretched, it strays from its dogma. they call this heresy the path of the ellipse and set two days of worship: perihelion, when the earth is nearest to the sun, and the farthest, aphelion. that is to say, snuff every candle and the apse darkens no matter how the shadows fall. [One-handed she reels, gathering up the coarser fly line, then monofilament, a spider’s envy. With her other hand she slices the dry fly free of the tippet.] I must say, you don’t look a day past the millennium. What’s your secret to longevity? the fish in the wild will teach you survival if you only know to ask. accountants first study marine life because even the carp knows to balance a checkbook, that](https://poets.org/sites/default/files/inline-images/Updated - Jordyn Rae Perazzo - Interview with Lachesis of the Three Fates.png)