LK Holt

rvival 1:
Fragments of Hippolax

I’m cold.             Hermes grant me some clean-groined
pants and some palm-warmed coins
           
                        pelt as in fur, not pelt as in throw
they hurt O Hermes the stones

                        the dead-grape wine, the fig too-sunned,
the floury plum and the wilted mint,

put them just outside the radius of Bupalus’ rope
                        that diarrhoeaing goat

           
                        One man prodded his mother’s half-burrowed
hare as she slept and was precipitately smote . . .

           
Surely Bupalus is likewise to hell.
                         Get off me woman you clamshell

hold my penniless brown-arsed pants
while I go for Hermes with my own two hands