My Caligula (1979)
I rewind the scene
where Caligula slashes this
big loser’s guts out
the blood thicks
maraschino very cherry sauce
all on his scruffy belly
all on the wet sword
it’s so much phony gore
you can’t tell what drooping
thing is his penis and
what is just another finger
of his intestines reaching
Caligula laughs all moviestar
all red-headed loveboat on
top of a roman love corvette
he plays at knowing the way
and I like to make this next part up
where he gets on all fours
like a yellowed fawndeer
finding a low hanging red
delicious fruit in the cornucopia
of loser meat and laps&sucks
at the drip that has fallen
sour and wishes that his
crown would get out of the
way so he could really crawl in
I think what he doesn’t do is
more important than what he does
and so in my version he leaves
his long feet making a trail
golden dogs fly to it and get sick on it
his white cloakrobe is immaculate
like bruisingly white he is bigger
than you’d imagine he gallops to the
trees where he fell in love with
his own soft gait and presses
through the woods
he is going out to find a place
to die and I watch him on the VHS
all rose ribbons in his curls
and I let him get away with it all
his gimme gimme doom metal
and purple leather house slippers
he’s a mirror faced narcissus with
a chopped horse head sipping at his shoulder
at the wide shot of the river
I let him become a boy
so smart so skipping chalk and
then become a thing at the mount
the chips of rock in the flesh of his forehead
from the grey fall are made of starmatter
all glisten all fishbone cricks all alabaster tonight
I turn it off get the shock
value blues and wait
roll my dad’s videocassette back
draw a picture of
Caligula in his ashtray
I know I am ruined
when the same sun burns
freckles into my legs each
summer I always cut them off
Maya Stahler is a poet from Oregon who is currently an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her most recent work appears/is forthcoming in Longleaf Review, Squawk Back, Dialogist, and elsewhere.