Artists - Taylor Adkins and Ali Kasper
Nero killed his own mother to gain political power. The poem is a synthesis of that event, and a confession of the author regarding his own mother.
Matricide
I was something else when I was young. I hated
you, thought the only way to get rid of you would
be to have a blood transfusion and funnel you
away from me. That’s how much I hated you.
I would have thrown myself from the
highest bridge I could find, my body like a
Monet coming apart, the image
saturated by the sun. There was a
calling I would have wanted to answer. I
felt so much shame then, I swore that I could
hurt God, see him throw the daylight over his
shoulder like a sack, as if regretting how and what
men are taught. Even the camellia sears white
from nuclear winter. This is the truth
the dead know—that elegance is absolute,
that I could be lying. Psychosis wracks the
ghost body, the vessel used in dream. What can I
say to defend myself? That when I rise
every day, I feel like the Vitruvian Man? That I hunker down,
restrained like the wrecked seraphim of my youth,
wild and gnashing, wild and gnashing.
Over time, the wings train themselves to unfurl, the
heartbeat slows to a crawl, and the head of the
beast lies heavy in the palms of the one ready to tell it
beautiful lies before it is put down. Even the
brute must know tenderness before it
dies. Somewhere, your hands caress
my neck, and for a moment—everything
is as it should be. The Romans had a
name for this in Latin—mater. Being a
mother means doing terrible things. Trust me, I know.
So does being a son. And I now know the only
elegant way to die is to be beaten, and beaten, and
beaten into pigment, like Nero attacking his
mother with bloodshot eyes, regal with every
bash, focused on the early pleasure of her
milk, something unforgivable calling him
to do this, the worn caliga on his foot
drenched, somehow, in the only thing we know.
Ali Kasper
Nero killed his own mother to gain political power. The poem is a synthesis of that event, and a confession of the author regarding his own mother.
Matricide
I was something else when I was young. I hated
you, thought the only way to get rid of you would
be to have a blood transfusion and funnel you
away from me. That’s how much I hated you.
I would have thrown myself from the
highest bridge I could find, my body like a
Monet coming apart, the image
saturated by the sun. There was a
calling I would have wanted to answer. I
felt so much shame then, I swore that I could
hurt God, see him throw the daylight over his
shoulder like a sack, as if regretting how and what
men are taught. Even the camellia sears white
from nuclear winter. This is the truth
the dead know—that elegance is absolute,
that I could be lying. Psychosis wracks the
ghost body, the vessel used in dream. What can I
say to defend myself? That when I rise
every day, I feel like the Vitruvian Man? That I hunker down,
restrained like the wrecked seraphim of my youth,
wild and gnashing, wild and gnashing.
Over time, the wings train themselves to unfurl, the
heartbeat slows to a crawl, and the head of the
beast lies heavy in the palms of the one ready to tell it
beautiful lies before it is put down. Even the
brute must know tenderness before it
dies. Somewhere, your hands caress
my neck, and for a moment—everything
is as it should be. The Romans had a
name for this in Latin—mater. Being a
mother means doing terrible things. Trust me, I know.
So does being a son. And I now know the only
elegant way to die is to be beaten, and beaten, and
beaten into pigment, like Nero attacking his
mother with bloodshot eyes, regal with every
bash, focused on the early pleasure of her
milk, something unforgivable calling him
to do this, the worn caliga on his foot
drenched, somehow, in the only thing we know.
Taylor Adkins
Mixed media
Measures approx. 14" tall
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