Your names, the names of things
In the moist world through which I could lie to you
About what was here , what was left
After everything had been taken away .
Judith E. Johnson
BODY POLITIC
you think yourself Aeneas, it may be,
and call me Dido: easy to leave. you claim
I hold you with intolerable demands ,
say I fast net you whom your gods force free
and fire upon the planet to found Rome,
your
Pax Romana
bleeding from your hands .
I am no Dido though I am your home ,
your vault which, once you join me , justly stands
communitas,
the city's network. see:
that room, that arched chain, that linked self, that dome
you'd raise , I am. not elsewhere . here. demands
your flame an honest peace built honestly?
turn from mine, all Rome's roads will take false turns .
the
Pax Humana
burns as my hearth burns.
Diana Der-Hovanessian
COUPLES
Sunday afternoons along
the lake, Noah's twos
are strewn everywhere.
I stare at pulley-
ed swans who mate
