gods who taste

by Hayley Major

what was williams’ cold black wind,
was a new wind with every mention,
was supposed to be the thing itself
but it was still a word

they crashed their cars into ditches to feel
some thing, to find a meaning in the waste
of a factory or a night ruled by new metal
lesser lights

they were fast and fast to die, after a
bookshop in paris where he was named
in a foundering system, though he would not
be lost

what had to be known before it could
break, before he could veer from a 1920s
america, even though he knew who made
him, who to speak

who didn’t forget that aphrodite was formed
from the severed parts of time when they
touched the sea foam, when they bore desire
from earth’s sickle

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