Calliope sings: Ceres searches for Proserpine
My finger nails became pitted around the same time
I arrived at the city by the sea. You see, I’ve
tipped as many cattle as I have pennies
in my pocket. When I
was found out,
that’s when my body softened
into this malleable ball of teeth
& liver spots & the occasional clump
of hair. There where
no light goes you
will find where the things you’ve lost
have gone & coagulated into a greasy clump.
A vast fatburg of expectations, dreams
& desires. The
hero’s katabasis leads
into ruin & the god of the grain is resurrected,
ruined. You’ll not
slay me, coughing
sneezing hordes, because here I stay
in my impenetrable misery.
Calliope sings: Ceres asks Jupiter’s help
The Pisan Cantos might prop up
a wobbly television.
The Rings of Saturn
can’t really be spoiled by knowing
the plot. The photo
of my mother
is cropped such that it is no longer
a reliable source.
Notes from
Underground once came in the mail
from the Book-of-the-Month-Club.
The edition was hardback but otherwise
I remember nothing of it.
“Thunderstruck”
is a song by a band whose albums
I’ve never owned, but I remember seeing
the cover of Dirty Deeds Done Dirty
Cheap & wondering what dirty deeds
were & why were they so expensive
to begin with. You
might use Infinite
Jest to kill the fuck out of a house
centipede who in turn just used
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
to make a lunch of a passing cockroach.
Hint: we’re the cockroaches;
true story--at the conclusion of our
study of James Joyce we were supposed
to bring in something that would be a pun
on the title. There
were plenty of Portraits
of the Harpist as a Young Ham, but I
brought in a bag of rune stones
because I’m stupid & I have no sense
of humor.
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