Translations of a Runestone Found in Minnesota
Amelia Gorman
The first translator told a bloody story, waving his arms wildly in the library. He, too, came from a farm in Kensington, raised on eddas and alien codices, read linear B in cracked edifices. He died discredited, poor poet who should have been born a sailing skald of ancient eras.
we ten hunted the wolf that eats the moon
pierced and tracked it til dawn
the trail ended at this stone
where we came upon the body of a young girl
riddled red with our spears
The second translator wasn’t even a translator. She was a frowning geologist sad at the state of academia to see this money-grab, this fake for fame.
This is nonsense. It’s just a collection of random
cracks that appealed to some sap’s sense of romance.
The third translator rattled under layers of dolerite and sod. No one alive remembered how those bones once walked, grew rye, and read the Bible by the fire for four decades of hard of Minnesota winter before bad luck and early snows caught up with her.
When the soil finally opened its jaws my husband planted me here
dead months since the cold stole my breath.
I will pass the centuries grinding against the stone
trying just to spell my name.
Amelia Gorman is a computer science student in Minnesota. She’s a fan of history, hoaxes and horror. Her poetry has been featured in Nonbinary Review and she has a short story in Innsmouth Free Press’s She Walks in Shadows anthology. You can reach her on twitter at @gorman_ghast.