esoterica

Originally published in the Spring 2019 (21.1) issue of Open Minds Quarterly. (N.b., the link is dead, and there is no archive.) The poem describes the profane, arcane rhythms of obsessive-compulsive handwashing. Of note, the Cleopatra referred to here is Cleopatra the Alchemist, not the queen (though I do suppose the queen had her fair share of gold). By the same token, the Hermes referred to is not the god but, rather, Hermes Trismegistus, another legendary alchemist.