Cleopatra Married Her Brother When He Was Ten

Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in the 1963 Hollywood budget blowout 'Cleopatra'

Cleopatra Married Her Brother When He Was Ten

 

Central Otago was having the hottest summer in five hundred moons

Its women folk melted into pools of perspiration every afternoon around three

As they lay on their beds panting

dreaming of ceiling fans on high and

Shirtless Jason Mamoas in MC Hammer pants fanning them with

Long-handled ostrich feather fans

Smiling adoringly

while their spa baths of chilled asses’ milk drew

into lactic acid boosting age spot reducing perfection

Cleopatra kept a herd of 700 donkeys to maintain her daily fixation

Did you know

She was also barely five feet tall 

Did you know

The lovechild of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar was named

Caesarion – a son

Alas on rising an evening dip in a lake with ducks and swans was the only option

slimy with various manures the water if perfectly chilled did

nothing to plump fine lines and wrinkles

and rewind the ravages of time on local femme 

 

The heady heat that followed day into night would not leave

The drought ridden land until autumn

It was the endless summer that drove her to it

One hot lady took fate in her sweaty palms

put on a sundress and a wide smile of Charlotte Tilbury Electric Poppy Hot Lips and drove to Queenstown Central – please note there is no 

Queenstown in Queenstown Central - it’s in Frankton

There are a lot of bargain bin barn-sized stores with small electrics departments 

Investing in a supercharged 1000 dollar Dyson Air Cooler was a stretch too far

The hot hottie spent $69.99 on a Goldair Desk Circulator with Blue Tooth to

efficiently blow warm air at herself on high

Why Blue Tooth she asks the very attendant attendant

You can take it outside

Wait a hot picnic – that’s an idea

Lady and her Mac desktop al fresco trying to 

Write the novel she’s been trying to write

Well, resurrect for a long since hot forever

 

They’re at the counter now going through the motions

Credit card, Fly Buys, mobile number

Everyone knows the drill only now

There’s a new one

“Do you have a gold card?”

Poor lady swoons her lipstick matts she may as well be

in the desert astride her bad-tempered camel named Nobby at noon

A blush prickles from the tips of her toes to her scalp freezing her brain

I’m 58 says a limp voice

Mr Attendant attendant keeps going

He goes on and on acting the fool and the goat

he has no idea what the required age is for national super

The lady fidgets and looks around for one of those stands with

How was your experience today

she would have smashed that sad-face

Slapped it so hard with her new slides from La Tribe

Now the guy beside her is staring

Is the joke on her – was she missing something – a store loyalty

What is your gold card? she asks Mr A A

We offer a discount to our senior citizens he smiles with full teeth

Where are all the good one-liners when you need them

At the bottom of an alpine lake turning into a future proofing gut enhancing algae

I’m not that old someone says feebly you need to be 65 for a gold card I need seven years

She also needed her receipt

 

The next day the temperature drops to a cool 16 degrees

Allowing pause for a moment from Googling why ass not cow for bathing

And fun facts about Cleopatra and her baby daddy Mark Antony

They had a secret drinking club à deux – The Inimitable Livers

But the summer continued hot and she ran that fan on high

Sometimes she took to her bed of an afternoon sat it beside her and dreamed

But she never took it outside

Jane Bloomfield

from Collection 2023

A Friday of Poems

 

Mad author running in permafrost with dog, June 23

Club Mile High Confusion

Aisle sitters yes you

Why would you choose to stare at the back of a seat when you can stare at the world from

32,000 feet

And sit in the sun

Wear your shadze if you want

As you gaze down at the clouds like goddam Jesus himself

or god himself

Or god's mum

Queen God

Moon cloud mattresses

Kapok dreams heaven sent to

mountain ridges, kidney-shaped lakes

braided rivers cubic zirconia bright

the sea oh the sea

green carpet crops

a house with a child waving

You're an explorer of the 2020s

A human drone

While you smell the Nescafe permeating the cabin

cookie or kumara crisps

Club mile high

Windowseat Tours R Us

Robbie Williams Was in a Band Called Take That

I once had a novel edited

and was told I used that too much

And that that is not needed

That it's most often superfluous

Now every time I go to at a that

I fight myself

then I leave it out

But I know for a fact

that sometimes

just like a Brit boy band

That word that

is needed

so I slap it back in

Take That

That

Running Into Sixty

The GP called Dr Caramello like the biscuit said

When you start running you should only run one minute

then walk one minute

Otherwise you’ll get shin splints

Otherwise you might not be able to walk the next day

If

Like me you start running

Mental as anything

You’re feeling good

It’s Day #1

You manage ten minute stretches no sweat

Actually you are sweating but you’re enjoying

The sweat

You ran down to the river

So you run up

As best you can

But you puff like a pot smoker

And you have to stop frequently

To catch breath yours

You don’t stretch after your 5 km run

You’re too busy Tweeting about it!

“Thought I’d start running again. Day #1 done! All joints intact!”

You do get the chills and drink coffee instead of water

The next day you ache all over

By the afternoon you feel like you’re coming down with something

The flu, the covid, the cold so common

You’re hot in your new modal top from

Glassons made sustainably from beech leaves

You think you’ll go to bed early

But you have G & T read a chapter of Penelope Lively

You love Penelope Lively and want to be her

You cook the dinner

You look at the new running shoes you bought 

high post Day #1 run

And decide to give yourself another day’s respite

In case, you know, shin splints

Then you’ll run again

Into sixty

 

 

Jane Bloomfield

from 'Collection 2023'