Sarah Dowling
These Things Now for My Companions/I Shall Sing Beautifully
Be it known that I carried a revolver, a willing
pistol into this century. I had an interesting name,
after all. I was Troy, Eureka, Etna and Antioch.
I scraped a big red gash. I was terrible but I for-
got. I took the older-than-being knives to beauti-
ful limbs. I named myself for the ancient poet-
ess. I called out to Athens, Rome, Albion, and
Arcadia. I thought the pluckers would forget,
somehow the pickers forgot me. I wrote, rosy-
fingered in smokeless powder. Few people in the
area were aware. In forty-nine Palmyras, forty-
eight Spartas, forty-five Senecas, thirty-nine
Phoenixes I penned a dead practice, I converted
my models to local names. All this I harvested,
missed, and forgot somehow—my vision dimmed
with tears.
I brought on heavier sleep, I willed all to black.
I carried the name of the family that settled these
thirty-three Uticas and thirty-one Corinths, twenty-
nine Omegas, twenty-seven Smyrnas and remade
the coming century. I was reddening high at the tip, I
pumped rounds into convenient targets and dream-
ed of twenty-four Olympias, twenty-three Clios,
and twenty-two Venuses who were all fond of
Sappho’s poetry. I ran across, being out of reach—
they didn’t notice—rather, they did but I took the
heavier revolvers. In Akron, in Delphi, in Altamont,
and Cambria, the apple-pickers missed me—I was
smokeless, amusingly soft. Twenty Catos, twenty
Ionias, and twenty Ovids, nineteen Hectors and
eighteen Orions told a little story about how I sur-
passed what I entered. I plucked the special accu-
racy of power. I plucked seventeen Solons, seven-
teen Atticas, seventeen Cincinnatis, seventeen Eu-
clids, Platos, Virgils, and Ciceros, I was plinking
in this terrible somehow. I gashed my own face,
turning high at the lips.
I entered Sylvanias through to Albas. I targeted
a mangle of friends. I was on the top-most branch.
I was bulky. I was willing to hit limbs, to be new.
I named eleven Utopias, eleven Cretes, and eleven
Hibernias. I took the state to have a case, a thing like
black, new will-to-power. I made excursions to ten
Neptunes, ten Scios, ten Aeolias, ten Corydons and
ten Jupiters. I reddened on the highest blush, a deli-
cate somehow. I was a soft flame. My skin reddened
to a target, semi-jacketed by the beautiful moon. I
was the honeyapple of Ithaca. I was a special kind
of Elysium. In this Rubicon, on this high branch, I
was a new century revolver. I entered eight Deltas,
seven Aurelias, Didos, and all my seven Mentors. I
just went down, and that was it. I was ripening and
turning red on the—reddening high on the—getting
ripe like that sweet Ida on the top-most bough. But
somehow there was this terrible gash and I couldn’t
reach it, I couldn't reach the Elyrias, the Lithias, the
Petras. None could get it, I just couldn’t.