Ice Cream & Anchovies

You grit an antebellum smile

Of broken teacups

The handles jutting from the sherds

With fingerbone accusation

I will sigh

Quite previous

Knowing that you drive

A vacuum like a Trojan horse

The sink as furied as any

Sea wracked by angry gods

In the Peloponnesus

Thinking on the poetic remains

Of Lucretia Maria Davidson  

(Lea and Blanchard, 1841)

How brief and late she was

I suppose we must cross

A sardonic gulf

The sweet and salt of anchovies

That I never thought was any kind of fish

At Pompeii’s, the Neapolitan with that noisome taste

Of strawberries grown too long

Over poets’ graves

All sobriquets and jokes

Etched in Roman letters

Read as much with laughter

As dismay