False
Curiosity
I don’t believe it kills cats
Instead, it kills hate
(Another peom from Artemesia’s Revenge)
The press release from Artcurial
predicted a modest €600,000 to €800,000.
The newly found Lucréce would draw museums
and collectors, but no spectacular bidding expected.
This third of Lucretia represents a young woman’s surrender to shame.
Artemesia returned again and again to this story –
women once powerless seizing their power,
stabbing self-determination in its aching heart.
Where to start the bidding for lost virginity?
The price would
shock the artist.
€4.8M
What do I say when he asks what I know?
The future I see is not one he wants.
He would be king, ruler of all
But I see bewilderment when he learns
Someone else has usurped his throne
He is not the first to be a pawn
Of another’s manipulation.
He will not believe me while he
Can wield power like a dagger
Shaping destiny by severing those
Who do not bow and flatter every move
Heedless of the subterfuge around him.
But there is a propitious moment coming
That will bring him down.
I could reveal the visions I have seen
Or let the future go forth on its own.
When he calls me to tell him
What the future holds
I offer what I know to be true:
“A just ruler has no need to fear
The wrath of those he governs.”
Ah, the dulcet sounds of eastern
bluebirds and eight a.m.
zelda battles, nephew’s up early
Feed me a slug
A fragment of my day
No doubt the well’s run dry
but he returns to it
day after day expecting
to retrieve an oak bucket
full of clean, quenching water,
not sand and sediment,
three bucks fifty in wishing coins,
certainly not the desiccated
carcass of a bullfrog.
It would be insanity to think
tomorrow will be any different,
but he already knows he’ll be back,
drawn to that miserly well,
sporting a new necklace of hollow bones,
singing a mid-summer’s song.
I’m afraid of being full
I don’t want my body to be satisfied
The implications of that are far too heavy
A woman cannot feel or be enough
Most don’t even know what that means
And so to quell my hunger is wrong
I’m much better at running on empty
Much more comfortable pushing through the pain
To be sated is an impossible standard
One placed far too out of reach to be attainable
And so I sit, starved, waiting for a moment of fullness that will never come
The garage held the cold air.
Not enough to send us inside,
but enough for my breath to turn pale
in the darkness.
You stood across from me,
rolling a joint with slow hands.
Outside, the moon hung low
and stars slipped through the open door.
From the kitchen,
Frank Sinatra drifted,
crooning about strangers in the night,
like he understood something we didn’t.
I remember the paper cracking
faintly between your fingers,
the embers glowing in the dark.
The joint was warm when you passed it,
still holding the shape of your hand.
It tasted earthy, smoke heavy on my tongue,
clinging to the back of my throat.
The smell clung to everything—
your flannel, my hair, the cool air,
the silence between us.
We passed it back and forth
without speaking,
watching the smoke disappear.
There was only a narrow space between us,
and still,
I spent the whole night staring across it.
Moonlight caught your mouth,
eyes half-hidden
between tiredness and smoke.
Part of me believed
the night would never end.
Sinatra would keep singing from the kitchen,
the cold would never deepen,
and we would stay young.
