after John Dryden and Miguel Antonio Caro Aeneid IX translations
She leaned against the cabin sill—her calf love lost—
While Foshie chickenscratched frenzy, sculpted lite scifi
in a fettered jaundice folder (the cat’s paw to
her rivulet thinking) near her beau’s bunk; and stopped
to tarry, catch some writer unspool sudden lines.
Plunged in his own moment’s razor gaze, he muttered:
“When you a mortal can’t begin to comprehend
its effects on your ordained action, the burden,
all it is, all it could ever be, lands in your lap…”
As the hebephrenic pulpit banters dwindled and
unthorazined morphemes budded bland, each gasp for
pause or phrase cut through short, shorter. She strolled off, ditched
his sight’s chaff. Perhaps the trailer hick’s qualm rippled
her calming waves, their offbeat beauty its kind mirage.