De Civitate Angelorum

“And Something’s odd—within—
That person that I was—
And this One—do not feel the same—
Could it be Madness—this?”

— Emily Dickinson (Emily Dickinson, “[The first Day’s Night had come—]” Stanza 5, Lines 1–4 (Lines 17–20 overall), in “Poems” of The Pocket Emily Dickinson: Edited by Brenda Hillman, published at Boulder, Colorado by Shambhala in 2024; page 44.)

“Art’s cruel. You can get away with murder with words.”

— John Fowles (John Fowles, “October 23rd,” in “[Part] 2” of The Collector, published at Boston by Little, Brown and Company in 1963; page 169.)

                         F.

D  e Civitate Angelorum: read it
  as if everybody will understand
everything, and that makes them
understand, opening our doors to

unwed mothers, for them to
discover beyond the cruelty of
their world another worse than
nature’s, more sinister, her parable’s

more terrible imperative: don’t choke
in the orchard, ghosts pulling
strange energies over corpse roads
intone eulogies for small sorceries

                         I.

enlarged by loss, a confession
in wet cement edited by
the process of centuries, RIP
status, the kind of love

that would blind a flower,
frozen tongue tundra, shock puts
the spark back in my
eyes I get off with

your head, get away with
blowing it guiltlessly all over
your lips, never happier than
when being filthy, but that’s

                         A.

just me being meta, baby,
penciling-in graphite gilt, greying with
silver slivers of floriated tongue
wit-tipped, excoriating edges about to

split to splinters with self-reflexive
quips, borrowed feathers, fame feels
like grief, entices you with
the freedom to speak at

the cost of experiencing life
you will forever miss and
always find your Self vying
to seek, ‘Fuck you!’ but

                         T.

with ideology, no apology, I
traffic in stories no one
can afford to tell, in
my night-skin, baby, in cursèd

duet with my instrument, robbing
my Johnson of its plot’s
thickening rub the longer and
harder I tug, predicament Augustan

as Ovid in exile on
the Black Sea, punishment for
a poem and a mistake,
to be surrounded by an

                         L.

ocean the colour of ink
self-imposed prison of my own
isolation’s love unanswered, desire’s burning
for touch recurring like a

ritual chant’s initiation of a
perpetual cunt, dissatisfaction, anticipation of
bitch and moan beginning as
an itch in the pants

until, growing, panting, an expansion
of inches demands hands drawn
down fist around and confound
refrain, obliterating modesty with diamond-edged

                         A.

fingertips, digging a ditch so
wet its explosive resonance echoes
the mouth of a grave,
tearful, intense, unashamed in this

tent to have spent what
wealth, mea(n)t for procreation, it
becomes a man of fashion’s
pleasure to waste, a chorus

of surplus hope sent to
populate oblivion with only salty
taste left of its ghost
to trace, to taste, when

                         X.

jaws close and eyes open
to dissonant, disowned groans, how
romance accrues to a name
through crazed repetition, a Devil

you can only meet on
your own terms, in the
absence of whom your opposition’s
growth defines a moment that,

unlike him, never goes, memory
a terror to behold, as
though a candle whose two
ends you both bloat out.

“De Civitate Angelorum”

— Notate Bene: ☞ The title of the poem and its opening lines are derived from comments made by Ernesto Estrella about Donatien Grau’s Latin travelogue of Los Angeles, reviewed by Fergus McIntosh as “The Best New Book Written Entirely in Latin You’ll Try to Read This Year: Why Donatien Grau, an adviser at the Louvre, decided to write ‘De Civitate Angelorum,’ a book about Los Angeles, the Roman way,” in “The Talk of the Town[:] Dept. of Dead Languages” of The New Yorker (September 23, 2024), published online at New York by Condé Nast on September 16th, 2024.