Zeus

for Cass

he touched me so I live to know

how utterly indifferent they were in Sparta

of an unremitting pleasure

“I give them three weeks here,”

that’s one point of view: without a doubt

that it will come again,

our parallel delirium,

a new world that was Greek and great

“—kind of foolish,”

and now I’m different from before

“he don’t look smart,”

to the mirage we carry on

“she’s got a nose of her own,”

on to my dreamed-of paradise

as if I breathed superior air,

as no other has been illustrious

it was a boundless place to me.

** a cento composed of lines from “Lover’s Wine” by Charles Baudelaire, “In 200 B.C.” by C.P. Cavafy, love poem LII by Emily Dickinson, and “The Displaced Person” by Flannery O’Connor.**

This poem was included in my book "I want you to feel ugly, too," which can be read on issuu.