day ONE HUNDRED and FIFTY EIGHT

The Orange Menace on Vacation at the Parthenon

One of my guys told me people used to get together here, a cult drawn to huge spectacle. Such a temple. Can you imagine? And the statue of that broad, Athena—a god, really. Or goddess. Whatever. And it had gold inside. If a real broad could be like that, right? Such a historical place. Really, really historical. Or historic; it doesn't matter. We were going to do a casino just like this. It’s true! But then I thought it would look really, really bad. This place is like, it’s in disarray. Disgusting in a lot of ways. So much of it got smashed by a bunch of Italians—greedy, greedy Italians before there was an Italy, OK. But you have to respect that—going in and just destroying someplace because you want to, saying goodbye to sculptures that would be worth a fortune. Why the hell not? They just came in and blew it up. Kablooey, right? No insurance. But it’s still really, really historical. So it means a lot to be here. I mean, I’ve been to nicer places that are in one piece, but this is neat!

--Daniel M. Shapiro
(poem previously appeared in Menacing Hedge)



Daniel M. Shapiro is the author of Heavy Metal Fairy Tales (Throwback Books, 2016), How the Potato Chip Was Invented (sunnyoutside press, 2013), and The 44th-Worst Album Ever (NAP Books, 2012). He is a senior poetry editor with Pittsburgh Poetry Review.