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“¡Don’t tell me what to think, niña malcriada! And, you—�� Don Gabriel pointed at Marco, “Stop filling my daughter’s head with nonsense.”
― Margarita Barresi, A Delicate Marriage

“Christ, I feel like a naughty schoolboy again,�� said Alec as they walked into King’s Bench Walk. “We have just had a dressing-down by the headmaster. Strider could easily be a man handy with a cane.��
“That man Strider is a crook,�� said Bing-Wallace. “His utterances are like the product of a performance of Joseph Pujol �� Le Pétomane!��
“Who is Joseph Pujol?��
“He is a well-known French flatulist performer.��
“What?�� Alec stopped dead,
“A fartist, dear boy, a performer of farts.�� Bing-Wallace began to giggle, as did Alec.”
― Hugo Woolley, The Wasp Trap

“You can always rely on Daddy to state the bleeding obvious; it used to madden her and Edgar, but now she finds it soothing.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“...as the bitterroots, necessary for the healing but unpleasant to taste. (What Father Sacco's parishioners say about the man.)”
― Joseph C. Sciarillo, Gifts For Ugo

“The Peacock & The Eagle: Cleopatra's Entry Into Tarsus by Stewart Stafford

Cleopatra arrives, regal and mighty,
From ocean spray as Aphrodite,
Wealthy and waif, yearning for her,
Dared all to defy her possessive aura.

Mark Antony, struck by her sultry gaze,
Lepidus, prisoner in a bureaucrat's maze,
Sees power slipping from a friend’s hand,
Ensnared by a siren from a scorched land.

Lepidus was Caesar's trusted right hand;
A granule falling through hourglass sand,
Antony, headstrong military provocateur;
Funeral orator from bloody crown auteur.

Bargain's scorpion pincers; no longer twain:
Cleopatra was Ceres, promising Rome grain,
Antony was Mars' armed emissary,
Business and pleasure's flood tributary.

Antony: "Barge of emerald, Elysium's onyx!
Beyond counsel words of sage sardonic,
Gliding the Cydnus's silken seam,
This Nile Helen shall be my queen."

Lepidus: "Pleasure vessel of a floating whore,
Yours for a sesterce on the Tiber's shore,
Honour your oath, noble Roman creed,
Lest passion’s shipwreck sets out to sea.��

"This Venus virago on her mirage barge;
Serpent prow, silver oars, rhythmic charge!
What hubris to think she can equal,
The bloody talons of our Roman eagle!"

Antony: "Feast your eyes past peacock's bower,
She speaks Rome's tongue of naked power.
Mark it, that obsidian Sphinx stings -
Human head, lion's body, eagle wings!

"That is the form she takes to the public:
I smell a perfumed alliance for the Republic!
With Plebeians as her tickled cats, they hum,
I crave her beauty and company. Come!"

© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford