Part 17. Little Bears
Little Bears, arktoi, they were called. Dedicated to the virgin huntress goddess Artemis, they wore animal skins and headdresses, and on occasion saffron-yellow dresses. Vase fragments from the site show naked maidens running away from pursuing bears- a rite the girls themselves possibly endured with real wild beasts.
-‘The Hemlock Cup,’ Bettany Hughes
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The girl in the Kelly green tunic speed dating each president
Of the United States shows up drunk. Washington can’t even
Deal. She specializes in hedge funds. Her lips shaped like a submerged
Animal, patient and deadly. John Quincy Adams promises her
15,000 head of cattle and a summer home in Rotterdam.
Gerald Ford signs two copies of his inaugural address.
He drops the mic and backs away, smirking. Kennedy
Slips beneath the table and kisses each knee-cap twice.
Neither Roosevelt expresses interest. Pierce, aroused and arousing.
Grant sobs into her outstretched hand, his cheeks tough
As a used leather sofa and hot to the touch.
Bush fils barely touches his jalapeno poppers.
He leaves a damp spot on the seat.
Three thousand dead kings shuffle from the forest
For a chance to touch Madison’s feet. He makes his excuses.
She bums Schlitz after Schlitz from a delirious Truman.
Coolidge melts noiseless into the night.
Her planets, she says, match up with Garfield’s
With astonishing grace so she writes down her number
On the crepe paper flesh of his hand. The wound still runs.
Gulls descending on every surface of every surface of Manhattan.
Train tracks clogged with the run-off of senators.
She feels something like love pop like a lightbulb and replace itself
Walking towards the A-line under scarlet banners for the new god-king.
Something drowned in a broad and shallow pool of Grand Marnier.
Good things are happening somewhere out in the veldt, she thinks,
Patriotic and horny robots constructing plans in the national vaults.
Trees felled over Broadway. Brick Lane Curry House closed down
Because of weeping sores.
Socrates rattles his cup against the floor,
He tries to get his thoughts on paper. Poem, will you love me when I’m dead?
Will the prison guards read you and feel like shit about all of this?
Arktoi moving through the outskirts in flight, soft soles
Of their feet pricked up by nettles and discarded fangs.
Young as fingernails, transparent as rough clouds of calcium.
Girl unlocking apartment door with the ancient tailbone.
Girl sleeping sideways, miracle-style.
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