Annick MacAskill
(three poems from Medulla (Ill Meat), a translingual erasure of Catullus)
I. v. 1
Slice me, our common
miracle. You in the
temple stay;
imps count paces,
their method vile.
Boys worshipped you and
me, too. Skies paled.
Last we, but the boy
lasts –
we a dwarf star in his wake too inconsequential
to collapse a dent over the horizon
aspires to the sky.
I. ix.2
The babe cackles meets our empty REM sleep
jubilant proud father
to our twisted limbs our oneiric chains
muscles our resolve defeat met.
I fear we
rasp
as our ill meat divine
spoils. I know your
incantation, it caws
in my essence – music
and pulse as bile
scatters.
II. xi.3
I know him now – a virgin
trained in infatuation
errant ferocious
a tiny terrific divinity
shaking eternities destinies
of emperors
billionaires –
my desire is not his gain:
I set my passion to another melody,
forgive the kid his puerile
transgressions.
Venus absconds Amor pulverises
but it was Catullus who sank me.
I swam my way to shore.
Name me
Penelope
I am not your catch
your vestal your guise.
I am venom ice.
1. Catullus XXIII (l. 4) – XXIX (l. 14).
2. Catullus XLV (l. 17) – LV (l. 1).
3. Catullus LXI (l. 13) – LXII (l. 4).
Annick MacAskill is a poet and reviewer whose work has appeared in journals such as Canadian Notes & Queries, Room, Grain, Versal, Prism, and The Fiddlehead. She is the author of a full-length collection, No Meeting Without Body (Gaspereau Press, 2018), and a chapbook, Brotherly Love: Poems of Sappho and Charaxos (Frog Hollow Press, 2016).