​The Lesser-Known Riddle of the Sphinx, by Anastasia Vassos

The Stargazer (western Anatolia) c 3000 BCE

​The Lesser-Known Riddle of the Sphinx

                                         There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other. She, in turn gives birth
                                         to the first. Who are the sisters?

My sister & I rarely talk about it
that hazy time we were small

Mom was crying on her bed
we stood at the foot of it in wonder

something gone wrong with the pregnancy.
Later we learned she had named the baby Mary Ellen

after whom, we didn’t know, Donna & I
named for grandmothers in Asia Minor

& so, by twist of fate, a ghost trio,
our sister’s remains buried

in an Orthodox cemetery we never went to
on the other side of town.


*

The first time Donna takes me
to the museum to view the sculpture

I feel the pulse of something lost:
baptismal cross, a gold ring

a missing limb. Stargazer, I stare
at your mystery, hair as short as mine.

Samson after Delilah & you have survived,
the tender slope of your shoulders

holds up the air: Atlas before Atlas
your DNA, my inheritance scripted

in marble. You are naked
& I merely mortal.

*

Dad loved repeating to us kids
the Riddle of the Sphinx:

Which is the creature
that has one voice
four feet in the morning
two feet in the afternoon
three feet at night?

A simple equation & impossible mathematics.
Years later I find a second riddle.

We chased each other around the yard
day & night.

Anastasia Vassos

Anastasia Vassos grew up in Cleveland. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. She is the author of Nostos (2023) and Nike Adjusting Her Sandal (2021). Find her work in RHINO, Whale Road Review, Thrush, Comstock Review, and elsewhere. She is a reader for Lily Poetry Review, speaks three languages, and lives in Boston.