3. Piety Or

Find your lust on the map and go east
into Allegory — stray path, quicksand, grimp
and precipice — you will find her there:

        to glimpse beneath her skirt
        the scaly legs. She will smile
        and catch your eye to make you

her mirror — lustrous Melusine — her purfled thigh
which is slippery to the touch. Smell her
on your fingers afterwards and go
to where the gate opens in the air —

Luce pinioned under the lilly pad — open
the door and peep through, she will not
wake from her green slumbers —
her orb distilling, in her compliment

an obsolete word for sex, she lisps,
her tail stretched out in wondrous length.
She is a radiant girl. Soft dimples
in her wings disclosed, her hair flotant Or;

armed, crined and crowned. Or you may
find her wailing on the Mount,
I don't give a fuck.
Her voice like a small trumpet,

"both fierce and fell."

Piety Or.

Her reputation is not good.

(It is a symbol of Christ who saved mankind.)

It is a manic energy, she grows her thyroid
in a pot — feeds it iodine, feeds it the isotope Segreant,

thistle, jessant, a hurt rose
gringolé — the fructed mandrake,

distillery of mandrake, to
shriek in a jar, to store this

slip sinople (aphrodisiac, narcotic)

at sunrise, at or
before 6 a.m. and talk
for many hours without saying
one thing to spare sleep
until it is itself a dream.

She will say this
and she will deny
she has said it:
torse of spell.