On Romulus, While Abel Sleeps [A Chthonic Song.]

“I told you how I blamed you for so much,
your fist blooming into a prismed silence, a spectral call
for quiet, cheering from the chorus as your fist anoints
liquid mercury to my lips, the sign to all that I have
succumbed to your weight, wordless.

Brother, if you called for purple, I would give you amethyst
from my mouth; if blue, water and a sail.”

Guided by Dante, Freud, and a pantheon of other literary and mythical figures, Justin Limoli travels to hell and back in this new play about brotherhood, loss, and what it means to keep writing when all you write about is grief. A stand-alone work as well as a follow-up to Bloodletting in Minor Scales [A Canvas in Arms.], Limoli's latest blurs the intersection of play and poetry even further, creating something both beautiful and wholly unique in the process.