The Study Of Latin
In Latin Club, we created togas
From bedsheets and translated Cicero,
Tales of the Punic Wars, how Caesar
Conquered all Gaul in three words.
Sang Dies Irae, Dies Ila.
The priest raised the chalice
To the crucifix over the altar
Where Jesus hung in ceaseless agony.
We stood, knelt, genuflected.
We blessed ourselves.
We, the Latin scholars, repeated
The beatitudes. Gloria in Excelsis.
The organ aired its tones
Like holy laundry.
In time the priest was turned around
Like a doll on a pedestal to face the congregation
And speak in their common tongue.
I’ve forgotten almost
All that Latin
Thinking how I could have
Studied Spanish and would now be able
To read Neruda in the original.
The Child Who Ate Words
Words.
Congealed, coruscated, corresponding
To a frozen branch overhanging barb wire
Blistered with teardrops. Or a redtail hawk soaring
Over winter-blasted pastures
Or the old oak flooring
Creaking its hundred year lament.
Vessels of phrases cascading
Like the lower falls of the Yellowstone
Or choked in retention ponds
To invite the drowning child
Or perpendicular as the hickories
Ragged as beggars. Or indiscreet
As a woman in a negligee
Watering the lilies.
Surrounded by taunters,
I licked my ice cream cone
A vocabulary of sweetness.
Acknowledged their cant,
You swallowed the dictionary
Vanilla, vermillion, vanquish,
Venomous, violent, vamoose.
Presentiment, palpable, precocious.
by Joan Colby
Seven books published including The Lonely Hearts Killers, The Atrocity Book, etc. Over 980 poems in publications including Poetry, Atlanta Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The New York Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Epoch, etc. Two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards (one in 2008) and an IAC Literary Fellowship. Honorable mention in the 2008 James Hearst Poetry Contest—North American Review and the 2009 Editor’s Choice Contest–Margie, and finalist in the 2007 GSU (now New South) Poetry Contest, 2009 Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize, 2010 James Hearst Poetry Contest and Ernest J. Poetry Prize Joan Colby lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois with her husband and assorted animals.
