like a
souvenir. You returned to bed
in your
hometown one last evening
with an
emperor’s walk
and laurels
in your hair, picking out
my olive
face
from a
photograph on the stairs
as though
you were walking the groves.
Under a
graphite sky
Venus spat
on your shadow
as you passed.
Your mouth found me out
before I
could speak—
persistent
as ever, there was something
Roman now in
the boldness of your hands,
heavy with
your tongue;
a marble
god, unearthing me
like a
Phoenican.
You believed
in women too,
claimed to
have fistfuls of goddess hair
on classical
evenings,
tasted ambrosial
blood, the dull whirr
and hum of
electric lights,
the cheap
hostel nights with Artemis
and the wars
you lost
in her
stockinged summer nights.
Home now,
the hero,
my knight in
shining pinstripe
while
somewhere in a whitewashed house
your
cigarettes smoke to a ceiling of stars
in her conquering, iron lips.
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