A faraway land of leaping fire-maidens,
nimble in their polar boots, dark eyes for
drunk men to drown in, a sense of honor
like a razor’s edge, and midnight favors
even a saint might quibble his damnation on.
These theological dialogues, drugged with skin
and perfume, nude disciples lounging wide-eyed
as ocean, a little learning to narrow the flood.
Celine in Sigma, bearding the lion for a
denouement of cloves, each sin silked in a different
style: go first, as befits the Minister of Works,
go first, the stewardess awaits you, reptilian
talents and a scabbard locked and oiled.
Celine signals his desire, receives a key,
a lettre de cachet, misses nothing in the way of
set-up. The clocks, though, where are they?
Gone the way of calendars and diaries, and
curtains heavy as Sarai turn back the sun and
moon, sent packing like a pair of poor cousins,
to seek their fortune in another tale.
Delacroix, is that you? Despite his paper
and his key, Celine is uncertain of the way;
a blue cloud hampers him when he inhales,
the corridors lead back and forth and nowhere.
Eugene, I’m lost, I’ve run out of misfits,
my brain is soft with these fictional guests,
plush as veal beneath the hammer.
Have a turn, you’ll feel better, Sardanapalus’s
killer laughs through a fox’s mouth,
dismounts the darker half of the underaged, sly-
eyed twins, the one who guided Celine
out of last night’s thirsty cul-de-sac.
In Sigma, program notes accompany each
hanging, breakfast served in a silence of shaved
heads, a rising twitter out of the pale
recluse, pupils fixed on some inner image
which only rivers of wine might wash away.
And rivers of wine there shall be, cold Po
and frigid Rubicon and Tiber foaming up
to interrupt the bankside game of boules.
Celine’s luck has bled onto the list
of approved gossip, supplanting by a hair
that French painter and his cure for lice.
Go first? the dapper Tribune asks, I’d
rather go last, bearing up the train of my
betters, whose respect I’ve not yet earned,
however many virgins I’ve unhinged, despite
the dirt that lucky bastard spreads about me.
The clocks, not seen for weeks now, are
ticking somewhere in the castle’s granite
bowels, and the twin who does the nasty
knife tricks has promised him an audience.
We’re quite at home, you know, and one day
our bones will make the garden pretty
as a painting. We’ve been promised the
prime, midway the ashpit and latrine.
A woman came for you the other day …
or was it night? The drapes give nothing away,
no chuchotement for the Great Danes to
paw, from anteroom to chapel to bakery.
A woman came to seek his refusal, offering
a passage out for his soul and its shrunken
shadow. She was not pretty, but loose, and
easy, with a promise of gray comfort about her.
You can pay in small installments, she smiled.
Carve up your heart in eight, and give to me
one portion daily, to chew and swallow and
perhaps digest: what’s left is yours to keep.
Celine’s ticket had said ‘north’ and North
was Hell. How could he choose which placard
to wear, nailed through his vest, and why?
Horseman, surgeon, writer, dreamer, anti-Semite.
Croix de Guerre, scalpel, quill, and bib.
What is the word for the other thing?
In Denmark even the crabs are friendly,
and disgrace is something one gets over,
less graceful than gaffe but milder than atrocity.
Do you think the sanctimonious bitch will be
back? I’ve six incisions done but vanity
demands a witness to how I conquered fear.
I only watch and suggest, my crimes belong to others.
Explain yourself, your insolent bind, your mind
tricked out like Mata Hari, tripped up by the flick of a blade,
the drops falling quick and pure, quicker and more
pure than any thought you’ve lately rousted.
That’s it, in a word. Page and key, the twins’
eyes bruised to purple as the long night rages.
In Sigma the curtains are for more than hide-and-seek.
Damn me now with downcast eyes, my wrist
cracks when I turn your head to face me.
Pigeons tack my liver, their dead expressions
make me think of home, my home, abandoned
like an Israelite’s tent when the neighborhood
went rotten. What twists, what turns have
landed me at the mercy of my enemies.
They were orphans till I told them Hate your Father.