#104 from The Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus

By Brandon Brown Brandon Brown

with Dana Ward

I have so little want of activity

even writing with its pain more terrible than life

I don’t want but do because I’m kind of stupid finally

not in the way, you, Sarah know I am

nor, you reader, who think of me fishing.

Line, spindle, lure, bait. Instruments for me

are accessories, even the matchbook is only

a tiara to my eyes, the fishing lure a long

& white bracelet. Some of my

so-called friends think of me as a derelict

they always try to hold me to account.

“Tell me what happened on the drunken night in question”

On the witness stand I am a kitten

terribly cute but I can’t say a thing

about stupid, or fish, or last night.

I like to lay at the base of a hill

asleep while the shepherds work

bringing things to heel with tepid will where I source

my contempt in the index of swill.

The entries there make no mention of hell

which was sifted through the vale of tears, & fell

to make Earth, & the base of this hill where I sunbathe & murmur

‘jealous cellmate’ as my willful peers go by.

Source: The Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus (Krupskaya, 2011)

Biography

Brandon Brown is the author of The Persians By Aeschylus, The Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus, and Flowering Mall. In 2012, his debut play Charles Baudelaire the Vampire Slayer was staged at Small Press Traffic’s Poet’s Theater. He publishes small press materials under the imprint OMG! and lives in Oakland.

In November 2012, Brown was a featured writer for Harriet.

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