v

The ‘quill-prong’ of ‘a scorpion,’ a Caligula term.
Caligula himself meaning “baby-soldier’s boot.”

My own boot camp being off the map might confirm
next to nothing while my left eye’s birthmark classifies

my tallest calling as one of those rare pond-walking poets.
One of those rare pond-walking poets who you’ve all sunk

in this yellow house of Carolina blue in order that you might
ride in some Pumpkin to (yeah) Cinderella’s Ball, that is sell-out

if not abscond from something akin to Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting
of the Snark. The word ‘hill-Billie rat’ was first used by ‘I don’t give

a flying fuck’ in a sealed, air-tight letter; a sealed, air-tight letter con-
cerning the self-same lost boy landing with a stone-cold thump upon

steam-punk water, landing like a puck that on February 22, 1980 was
“The Miracle on Ice.”