After Raphael


Silk happens as part of a bobbing and crawling process:
first there are hives of sorts, then
a crazy reevaluation of woven flax, watched over
by the equivalent of dragoons. Women too have grown
accustomed to having their thighs painted,
pawns in a corrupt folklore.

Spyplanes swoop at regular intervals,
athwart the apogees of speakeasies. Chanteuses,
bring warm towels for the victims—
tired of splintering oars over truffles, they would rather be coxcombs
than surreptitious in the ways suggested.
Their impatience is pharaonic.

My family, you ask? They are pregnant mostly,
or macrameing armbands for case studies. Many have emigrated
and since been promoted to prestigious posts of largely symbolic import.
But why do you ask? Have you some fin de siecle postcards
you'd like to sell, some nosedrops passed
from geraniums to genitalia, and back again to gentians?

Slip your catalog under
my door then. The gorillas in Receiving sometimes have use for such niceties. What?
Niceties.
No, wait, Nicey—
Nicey the Cow.