A poem about modern love and obsession, told through the story of Antony and Cleopatra.

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When the phone rings

And no one is there

Its your name I whisper to the empty air

Be still, my little God

Oh, won’t you come see about me?

You are the space between night and day

Twilight’s lost lash, a wish on the tip of my finger

You breathe life between my thighs

Like a piper for a pickled pepper

Or was it a plum pie?

I drip sanity into your mouth

Smooth obsession from your lips

A kiss for a kiss,

And God I’d love to tell.

When my love runs low you will be the flood

40 days and nights of tantric orgasm

A gentle sway on the bow of your hips

We are adrift

Two bodies left facedown in the Nile

Upon further examination,

The crumb was a tooth

Yours, an infant trophy, a treasure chest

A trembling visage in winter water

A shadow of a shivering and inconstant you

The kind of glimmer you can trace

With the edge of a silver tongue

Oh,

If only I could find you here

In the towers and turrets,

In the summer shoals

In the eye of Horus, who must find us

To be so fickle, so self-satisfied—

Death plays the drums

On the bones of the tender-hearted

An operatic pitch into the open palm

Of the afterlife

You know this dance so intimately;

The asp was always you, after all

A slender figure in a garden lush with

Heavy fruit, which, once dilated, ripens

And bursts apart

A rain made of sugar-sweet juice

That dribbles from your chin

And disappears beneath your collar

With every long look,

You plant your seed in my ground

A bloom, I give you spring

Thrice, and do you love me, truly?

I hold your arms behind your back

I beg your loyalty, your forgiveness

I command your worship, your submission

Like mountains crumbling into the sea

Or armies falling to their knees

A Queen amongst the Hellenists.

And when the receiver presses into my ear,

Your name is all that I can spare;

“Antony?”