[poem] cradle

[ib_archive]

author: lucinda tang
e-mail: jolie.folie [ at ] gmail dot com

Cradle Rome: I hefted your white robes. The consul’s song of skulls. Through crude latticework, mile after sailing mile, that pink-domed city. Loving you. Loving to ponder. Into whispering arcades, my softening core, beneath ten ancient tongues — ours — A statue of you, erect in black pearl. The sky heaves. My guts heave. This sacred cavern, becoming. Still comer. Waiting for you. Waiting to conquer. The medical man’s darkened hand over your flaxen child: Agrippina gilds his cradle. Fortunes spill on a listing spear. The augurs prosper. And here gold coins drop and skitter into my mouth.