Reprinted from Student of the Hippocampus with permission. For further details on Fragment Fifty-Eight, see Casey Bush’s excellent Sisters Around the Cauldron – Mary Barnard and Her Sappho.
a wet dog shakes
dancing with the dawn
hungover hooligans
encourage coagulation
smash the lookingglass
sloppy love gloves
gall bladder red goblet
tumbles off Earth’s barstool
eel filled river night black
overflows its memory banks
condemned to live forever
while tragically growing old
carried triumphant
around the Sun’s domain
at first beautiful and moist
but for an eternity drawn and gray.