Eight Poems
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by Sterling Davis
The Minotaur The unplundered heart is empty. Traces of burning, evisceration The sacrificial bull Eyes directed upward, toward votaries. Ariadne's eyelids; Libation jars pour forth sweet wine. A priestess walks by bearing a heart made of pure plastic A plasticity. The minotaur's horn thrashes and thrashes Thaïs Though dragon-beaked--- When she rolled her eyeballs back you were astonished. It is glorious to become---- Warily you sought her candidature Looping Petronius Arbiter, Soot-wet You sought her almanac. Thunderstruck, in her eye's neon You rolled back, shrieking, dumbstruck----. Anecdote of Rameses II Bow or be vanquished; Who dares disturb me from my embittered Sleep? I have your soul is a canopic jar; The pain was voluptuous. My god is fate; From the verrucose limbs of amethyst The cerulean of your eye’s oculus. The light phosphorized the glint of seas. Colloquy to Cleopatra What if I become your lover? Would you shriek? Would our mandalas unite Or collapse under the glare of the laburnums? My own fear is of another man’s Scent; Admixing with your Baiser Volé. I contemplate your mounds Your wet skin; Your invisible aura. My eyes, the death-beams Scrutinize the hardness of your thin body. Does my poshness impress you? The profundity of my body-form The negative capability-- The stolen light-beams. You’ve never met a character like me. Amaryllis Amaryllis, you are unimpressed by my poetry. One ought not bear the displeasure Of unsatisfied desire-- I love what is animal in the girl. I cannot countenance displeasure. One must not fear what they love-- There is no immortality in our love. Every human being must live without fear. The piety of gaping mouths. After Tyrtaeus I can command great armies And superintend Our affairs in the Senate. A Sovereign in Balenciaga. It is sweet to die in the pursuit of immortality. But no mortal man, even Plato. Can gaze upon the entrails of the Future. Best be a lawgiver. Man of Sparta, hoplites-- You were destined to die, and die gloriously. Now, you may rest under the boughs of The blushing Ilex And sport with the Pierian maidens. Best be health, wealth. Redound yourself in patriotism. Be about your shops, and ateliers And have no fear of War. Rest and eat the Nectareous Ariusian; And most importantly, BE THYSELF-- As in God, and Adam All man are made alive. The wages of sin is death: And the purgation of sin is the law. Sementivae I The dome let out into heaven A Dresden I declare this dome is like a solitary church; The saint's eyelids Were heavy with sleep Sleep dear Saint Don't let the sound of the fishmonger Destroy your slumber The last of them went out with Dürer; The charnel house opened right up Outside one could see the plowed field The shrieks of cattle The policeman In his robe of black. II The heavy materiality of sunset and old bones; Mantle quaking, eyes bloodshot. The stars let out into a blank heaven; Under Ariadne's lids Firenze too can frost; This is completion, then. This stone megalith. III Meliboeus loved his resplendent life The daily conquest The singed alabaster The dog's ichor His atomic egotism. His manners were particolored Eviscerations. By day, palmy annihilations The catechisms of bleeding Suns. IV In the Sun’s phosphor Barque laser-beams Flung to theorem of goat-skins. Outward, adamantine heavens Foam to crest of indigos. The Night’s blades sanction this fury; A malignant wave Pompey’s antediluvian; In Firenze too waves can frost This is completion, then. This stone megalith. In Memory of Rob and Michele Reiner It is something out of Aeschylus. The dramatist has become the tragedian-- Parricide is made most foul by the hands of Entitled killers. Even the Moon, above Cahuenga And moreover, the macadam Outside the lozenges of Brentwood. It is odd that hands who are so ready To spill that vial of Ethereum Fear death themselves-- However, somewhere, in some bower Of Acanthus Divine Minerva Touch this frozen child. Sterling Davis is the publisher and executive editor of Poetries in English Magazine. SHARE - Issue: 1.8 / April 2026 |