melissa flores
How Pretty You Are
An invocation to sexual potency inserted into a likely
lacuna in Petronius' Satyricon
"It's not you, babe, it's me!" And so I parted from Chrysis and
promised to
restore my body to a state of use. Forgoing a bath, I had a light
massage, then
ate some onions and some unsauced snails' necks, washed down with a red
spot of wine. Then I strolled a little and went to bed, shunning Giton
– one
cannot take a boy to bed if a disappointed lady is already waiting on
one's
member.
Morning, and I woke up feeling all of a piece. I went down to the plane
tree
grove and there, beneath the trees, I waited for Chrysis. Soon she
approached,
with an old crone shadowing her like an elder ego. Chrysis said, "Ah,
my
filigree love, is your gorgeous size to engorge for me today?" Then the
old
woman drew out a string of five colours from her dress and tied it
round my
neck. Then she spat into her palm, mixed it with dirt, and with her
third
finger, daubed some of the mixture to mark my forehead:
rise up And sex this cold-
come man To smells
of cunt – Say, "Pussy,
How pretty you are,"
and bounce
Like success, but tender.
Gush and quiver
When comes the time
for quivering, For every part
leads somewhere else
And white horses charge
to battle in salt and wave
and Venture...
When she had finished her spell, she instructed me to spit thrice on the
ground, and to place three pebbles into my pocket over which she read
another spell. Then she tested whether her work was done by touching me
alive, just on my loins.
Two Imitations of Tibullus
Unkind Rumours
Melissa sleeps around, says Rumour:
Why can't I blink my ears, and not hear!
Whispers form an unreal me, and I am tears.
Why word me into pain? Have peace.
On My Love
At long last, Rumour, go tell all,
a sea of tongues let roar my love.
I shan't filter my mails with a fire-wall:
yes we met, and loved, unmasked.
