to the god-queen

My black-eyed fire, the knives in the kitchen
are singing for blood, her brother whispers, his mouth hot
against her godhead. They are champagne-slicked,
drunk on adulation; his skin tastes of bloodiron
and he calls her by the secret names stars sing
to their sisters. She lets her head fall back, inverts the world.
(what else is a crown for?)
Above, her city flames, an electric asterism falling
into the dark-dappled sky. Ad astra per urbem, the one
truth she shares with the rat-messiah whose followers burn
her effigy, tongues forked and still bloody from the scalpel.
This is how the false god dies, he tells them, in flesh and fire.
He is not wrong. But she is a fixed star, and her throne
will not be upended with Cassiopeia's--
hers are the spires of cathedrals, the cool marble pillars,
the cold blaze of immortality that goes forth
before all of astral blood--
burning, burning, burning.