When she kissed those man-killing hands,
my flesh rust on her lips,
and Brutus absolved—I said
Well then, I was entitled
to the metal in the turning earthcore,
the tissue in an animal body,
the plutonium that kills you.
I watched senators watch me
bow my cursed head,
lap up glory like
sweet milk in the summer
and then blood came to
taste no different. Do you
think, when you grow old,
that you sink into carbon cake
decomposing your velvet girl bones,
sweet maraschino between your teeth?
The world is easier to walk on
hard. So when the ice caps melt,
lapping at throats,
you’ll be packed into
cartilage rafts
to float ’cross New York City,
with paperback Julius Caesars on
iron fence posts dragged from algae—
smoothed flat, spines flexing
for cool shade.

I want to tell her,
Look. Look up into space
at the arcane green aliens
coming for the children.
They can’t see what we know:
that the Earth turns but we stay the same;
that the crust buckles but we break.
And if they learned,
no one would be shocked at
our skeletons,
right?—fractured vertebrae
suspended by muscle,
marinating cells that flowered under song,
the curving rib Brutus scored (God,
they better not call him naive).
Monuments crumble but
history clings to astral skin for
longer, maybe.

Fever of translation:
she’s dreaming they might say of her,
This one knew something about being human
—this one died too romantic for tyranny.
I’m dreaming they say:
this one was one of the greats,
was merely naive. After all, I
loved Brutus, and Rome—
my last words were not
Et tu, Brute? but
καὶ σύ, τέκνον
and she echoes me in her
mother tongue: 还有你, 孩子
and in her new one,

Et tu, Brute? – “And you, Brutus?” in Latin
καὶ σύ, τέκνον – “And you, child” in Greek
还有你, 孩子 – “And you, child” in Chinese