Prudence in Hell 060
Semiramis
You are like clasping a knife between one’s teeth before boarding an enemy ship. This is not a poem, you will complain. It is not a poem, I may agree. I may not be invested in it as you are. —But you can do better! —I can always not settle. I can reconstitute the book from scratch and ashes. I can divert the course of your internal rivers. I can make this look like something it is not. That is my scrim. Scrim can be upholstery or gauze, you know. Let me pull it over your eyes and you can guess which one I'm using, which one tastes more like blood Because I cannot board with you between my teeth without slashing my tongue.
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri. Semiramis Hearing of the Insurrection at Babylon. 1624. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.