 |
| A nude protester—dubbed later “Naked Athena"—faces off against law enforcement officers during a protest against racial inequality in Portland, Ore., on July 18. Credit Nathan Howard/Reuters via The New York Times. |
Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod caeruleum efficit colorem. —Julius Caesar, The Gallic Wars
She fingers the blue on slowly, feralled in its wake;
she counts the steps from inside out the fenced-in fields of grace.
A vitrumned likeness wavers, a cats-lick from the rim,
in the tea cup in the circle of the saucer's closing ring.
Let the tongue tip shape the watchword in the shallows of its bow;
let sentry sleep and serpent sing beneath the shuddered vow.
Here is where their end is born; there is nothing at the gate
but ink and skin, the sylph herself: the cunt-directed state.
Caesar may misread you in the peripherals of his glass
or more likely overlook you, a needle in the grass
but as you plunge into his heel he will see the face
of what gives womb its dark and what gives blood its taste.
Peleg Held lives in Hiram, Maine with his partner and 21 chickens led by the world's tiniest rooster, Gavroche-That-Lives.