someone will remember us / I say / even in another time
—Sappho
We rumble in
walls. Chipping frescoes
clip us raw. Skin and hair
fall with paint.
Time did us dirty.
We live in a standstill:
Venus sits sedated,
Aries’s tanned hand
down her torn sandalwood robe.
Three naked
babies play a lyre.
Two thousand centuries and
they still can’t pluck
strings into songs. I
crumble on a fading
beach, waxwings
sting my eyes and mouth.
Daedalus follows,
whistling puns about my love
affair with the sun.
We ate oil paint. We
touched silk and humid air. We
got the stuff grapes grow into
between our lips.
Cheese? Grapes? Wine? Olives? Meat?
We taught them to
eat, fuck, sleep. We
watched them dance and drink,
draw us into walls,
tiles, ceilings, vases. We
felt glass break and
the ground shake. A mountain
hollowed then creamed out
lava. Their
flesh wrapped
in ashen plaster, we
saw them
become
screaming
statues.
