Girl Gang

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 ****A practice inspired by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer's A Hundred Falling Veils ****


Unabashedly-

I am still obsessed

with this minor poet's 

word meretrix. 

Meretrix fuge

flee the harlot

the Duff translation reads. 

But -trix is the feminine

agent, and mereo the word

to earn, and mer, the root 

of pure. So when Cato

and Vergil, and Ovid

(the traitors) used it to describe

a woman 

          who made money 

                        with her body for sex-- which I admit

was documented standard usage at the time

what they were really saying...

what I perceive exists today

is flee the earning woman

flee the deserving woman

flee the reasoning woman

flee the meriting woman 


and to this and these men I say

along with Queen Dido, Brave Camilla, 

Mighty Juno (the goddess of money

to maintain a household) 

meretrices, fugamos

roughly translated, 

"ladies-let's ride." 



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