The Doomed Prince
an Egyptian tale
One day after this the youth walked abroad in his fields, his dog following him. And his dog chased after the wild game, and he followed after the dog, who plunged into the river. He also went into the river, and then out came the crocodile, who took him to the place where the mighty man lived. And as he carried him the crocodile said to the youth, "Behold, I am thy doom, following after thee…
Thrush of locust’s wings descending over
the houses. The trek up the hill
blind & unbroken. Holocene electricity
from the windows blinding & broken
& silent. Crunching steps,
shift-locking bone to pin, the urn
of ashes glistering down the curve
to cripple the shadow of a waiting
alligator. The hill yawns, revolves, to
static shearing its drippling leaves––
naked buckshot through concave glass––
the silhouette of the black alligator
& its clay-cold eggs, too soft and not enough,
hoping to die, but sleep drawing
them into the past––a fedora hat
crushed by frozen grass, peony-
white dresses torn by the hooves of antelopes––
the last pass in a snow-covered war.
The first scene in a heat-humming reel
where bees hover and freeze, then
un-freeze, revealing superglued toothpicks
spearing their bodies, gripped by
this empty-handed family seeing their last dance
in the dried stone pond. Under the branches
husks of corn unfolding, tidepools shrinking
in fast forward, past houses of pinpricks
and tinsel, the family’s feet shift-locking
down the mud-scraped slope into
the train, a mariner’s hull bright
with blind, half-flayed orcas &
their suitcases. Arrival: bitter-melon smoke plunging
a neckline of pearls. The gatekeeper,
a golem-skeleton with a searchlight
for a heart, snuffs his cigarette
on the daughter’s arm, pink motorcycles
slashing foam on the streets. Atlantis
with walls of synthetic honeycomb,
which is to say ceilings of
walking water timed with clocks, which is to say
a thousand locust’s ghosts watching the family
pass through the threshold & burn.