This poem is a lyric narrative within the gothic and confessional genres, with strong elements of ballad and theological complaint. Its central theme is the trafficking and abandonment of a woman, the subsequent shattering of her faith, and her defiant but self-destructive turn toward forbidden love. The poem also explores inherited trauma and the seemingly unanswerable question of why darkness befalls the innocent. The voice is a third-person omniscient narrator who shifts between anguished witness, theological interrogation, and tragic chronicler of the woman’s internal collapse. Structurally, the poem unfolds across eight stanzas of irregular length, mixing quatrains and couplets. Repetition of key phrases creates a refrain-like meditation on desire, suffering, and divine silence. The title phrase suggests both a literal place of exile and a biblical resonance, with Egypt as the land of bondage and hell as ultimate abandonment. The woman’s rejection of God and her choice to lie beside “a priestess of deceit” frames her rebellion as both liberation and damnation, symbolized by quicksand imagery. Written for the “A Shattered Cup of Doom” novella, this poem appears in the “Second Shards of Broken Glass” chapbook.
“HELL AND EGYPT”
they sold her off to hell and egypt
her running blood, her like, her kind
like some cold slab of bovine carcass
and they rode off, left her behind
who set her naked on the stone
and who allowed this to occur
who left her lying there alone
why did this shadow fall on her
and what, dear lord, in darkness breeds
the heart it wants and the heart it needs
she swore to hell and heaven then,
with hand on heart, forevermore
that this would never be as such
no not again, no never more
and so forwent, and then she severed
whatsoever ties and binds
even unto god most high
and then, again, and for all time
for he allowed this woe to be
who tames the storms and calms the seas
they say he sees our darkest thoughts
and hears our cries, our prayers, our pleas
but she chose not their ancient one
in vain, she deemed him obsolete
and chose instead to lie in bed
beside a priestess of deceit
but the moonlight whispers marking time
the quicksand of her very sin
and though the kicking of her legs
she drifts and sinks much deeper in
she was sworn to not reveal
that she had been the devil’s whore
and so her wrath and agony
is shade upon the boy she bore
the heart it wants and the heart it needs
but what, dear lord, does darkness breed
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