Vocatio

Sonya Taaffe


We should just fuck already, Catullus,
I know the ways you like to bend a girl
or fall beneath a boy’s kisses
like a reaper in dry corn—
one-handed loving, the other always saved
for a scrawl on the tablets,
the slap and grip of words.
What poets say in passion to our muses
we write to outlive bones and bed and bronze,
ergo cum umbram non liceat futuam te vivens
verba poeta mea inter tua care seram.



Translation:
therefore since I who am living am not permitted to fuck you who are a shade,
I will seed my words, dear poet, among your own.


Sonya Taaffe reads dead languages for fun, edits living poets for ​Strange Horizons, and once named a Kuiper belt object. Her most recently collected fiction and poetry can be found in ​Ghost Signs (Aqueduct Press). She lives in Somerville with her husband and two​ ​cats.