This week’s poem, Rheros Iliad Kagoni’s “The Repetition of the River Acheron,” draws upon the ancient river of pain, from Greek myth, to meditate on intergenerational trauma. I love how this poem frames trauma as “The blood of the river that carries us,” and how it interweaves a sense at once of the epic and the deeply, intimately personal.

Kagoni is a queer, non-binary, Black person living in southern Maine. A Mainer at heart, Kagoni is currently finishing up their psychology degree while trying to figure out what it means to be a grown-up, with a “grown-up” job. They hope that someone, somewhere, will be able to relate to their writing and find a piece of themselves in their stanzas.

The Repetition of the River Acheron
By Rheros Iliad Kagoni

Trauma lives in our veins.
The blood of the river that carries us,
from one generation to the next.
Great grandmothers create lines of children
who create daughters who create daughters who create
who create children who create more children
all afraid to look their mother in the eye
all afraid to tell their mother what they want to say
all afraid to say what they need to say
all afraid to say
I love you.
I need you.
I’m sorry.

We drift in the Acheron,
We were born in the Acheron.
I feel as if I am the only one trying to escape,
I know that I cannot pull you out
You say that it is enough, because you aren’t going to be like
Like her
but that’s not the issue at hand.
Avoiding her in these murky depths
will not allow you to see the sun.

We drift in the Acheron
It lives in our blood
We will all drown in the Acheron
Together.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Repetition of the River Acheron,” copyright 2023 by Rheros Iliad Kagoni, appears by permission of the author.