Io, Transformed into a Cow, is Handed to Juno by Jupiter, Piece Designed by the Artist to Be Incomplete, Bucha, and The Next New Testament

by Lorćan Black

IO, TRANSFORMED INTO A COW, IS HANDED TO JUNO BY JUPITER 
		–AFTER THE PAINTING BY DAVID TENIERS THE ELDER, 1638.


                I.
		Jupiter Attempts to Lie to Juno


But what will you do with it?
It is true, the beast is a terrible beauty.
The blonde hair of its fine, high flanks, the sensuous muscularity 
that begs the hand to smooth it, the mouth to water, 
lips to moisten, or to part. 

I confess, love, I was undone—
I craved the creature for myself.

                II.
		Juno Curses Io


I could kill it. He would not dare to stop me—
or expose his lie—if I ripped the knife from ear to ear.

Look at it, so pathetic, 
stood there like that: doe–eyed & twitching 
before me, the mouth accosting itself—
caught in the act.

I think it blushes. I bet, at night, 
it touches itself at the thought of him,
his thighs, his hands, the hair that curls a spiral at his navel—
I cannot allow it. 

At my word a gadfly flies, its mouth malicious, 
starved & delirious over the waters of Egypt, 
delicious in its bloodlust—
‘This is my gift, a life in endless threat:

Make a home here, Io, under foreign stars.
See the moon rising over the Nile, the crocodiles 
& their song; a razor-silver nocturne played to blood—
their teeth at night.’

                III.
		Juno Warns Io

I have given you magnanimity. It will not come again.
Re–take your skin, but here strip: unloose yourself 
of notions, of all ties that bind his pull upon you—

for I am the pestle & the mortar, when you are dust 
there will still be only me & me

& old Invidia—
her ancient shadow passing 
lightly upon a wall. 

                IV.
		Juno Contemplates Forgiveness


Is it within me to forgive him this?
Search the stars their white-hot bastardies
that I could find benevolence to bend again before him, 
unfurl my deepest velvet darks & gift to him 
a token, totem, sign of trust—

like Helios, at the final moment, 
gifting Heracles a guilty freedom— 
the golden bowl?

PIECE DESIGNED BY THE ARTIST TO BE INCOMPLETE:
		–AFTER THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH WURTZEL


These blank spaces: liminal
like birdcall, fog 

smoking over 
a bridge.

This is a thing
that has happened. 

These steps: wide 
vaguery toward spaces

like some odd distance—
like cows bellowing in 

the shroud of an Irish field,
as a thing un-ending

but knitting, let’s say,
a kitchen in which 

someone puts a kettle on:
so there is tea 

& dogs barking 
as if—
: “As If” – Conjunction: 
Definition: Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
–1: as it would be if It was as if he had lost his last friend.
–3: that It seemed as if the day would never end.

You never did text me back & I didn’t
want to bother you.

The gods barked.
So we prayed to the dogs.

Someone in fog—in field—
shrouded a kettle & filled it 

over & over again—
cows bellowed a vaguery 

of tea thin as birdcall—
liminal:

like a backdoor 
hung open—

hung open, 
almost as if—

BUCHA


You have to remember, at some point 
someone was taking butter out of a butter dish 
when the windows blew in—

& perhaps it was fine china,
then suddenly it was bricks— 
smoke, fire, human bone. 

& then a child or dog 
screaming. 
It became rubble,

it became twenty-three
year olds wielding Kalashnikovs. 
It became necessary.

You Google: How do you make 
the perfect Molotov cocktail? 

Shaken, lit, but not stirred.

It became a tank rolling over
a civilian’s car & children pulled
close to burning from a missile-hot building 

& running—scattering along a street
under gunfire to what? 
Mass graves dug by Russian soldiers? 

It became bunkers 
& lone dogs barking & all of us watching  
screen by screen. There are bodies 

splayed on streets where they ran— 
though no-one comes to claim them:
smoke billowing 

into sky resembling a treeline
where (once upon a time) 
trees used to be—

& now there is no real end to this poem

THE NEXT NEW TESTAMENT
		–FOR LEO


will be written of sand and shadow—
there will be smoke in the air
and Andrew Christian underwear on the floor

drenched, slovenly, on a Sunday 
afternoon around about the time
church starts.

One of us will be cleaning ourselves off—
glistening/sticky/in pure wet love 
with each other, our male form—

whistling whilst we gather bathrobes/coffee/
birds chattering/the constant squirrel 
burying his bits in the soft soil at the hedge

in the depths of the garden, in the house you will soon leave.
The moons that rises over this house will not remember you.
At Limehouse

the moon will move through a room, 
ceilings three and a half metres tall/sash windows/
shoes inside the door—

flowers will drink from a fine crystal vase.
And everything drooping and leaking,
hanging/heavy/heavenly.

The next New Testament will be written
by men loving men/foot-sure/even. Fine-footed 
and drinking out of fine crystal/in love

with each other/
our male forms—
heavy-swung/heavenly.

What I cannot know now
is my absence
there.

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