Venus and Tuscany

         by Rebecca Henderson

behind flesh                   kept taut                    reside in bones

sensibilities wrap around spine

fingers examine dark spaces around the face

depress and spring back        adaptable skin

melding together to form whole

whose holes grow deeper as rain drip

drops

carve features of self

thunder big rain collides

pings       +

                slides

                                down

                                                    arm

swayed by lines of identity in prints on pads

gathers at feet upon pedestal

3 dimensions crossing

and spills onto floor

soft shapes of changing persons

gathers droplets and becomes someone else

forging new in existing flesh born in fire

changing the natural to supernatural

this is not me

Venus               as Michaelangelo saw her

                                   bound armless into stone

frozen upon time transfixed above man as hand carves soft spaces

under breasts smooth

+

sand perfection into being

beginning as solid skin

nightingale voice lost to granite

                          heart beat             hollow hush

dormant life in his eyes as she comes into reality

under chisel        +        rain of stone shards

an ideal she will never

                            this is not me

burn off the draws    find gold within flesh

attached to riches        +        mine skin behind walls

my skin behind walls

rain crack glimpse ore in fortress

exalted above turrets in torrents

down patter

              split splatter

                            melting mud brown rivers


flow gravity descend

long legs

to toes

spill off the pedestal onto floor boards

                                          fall through cracks        +        seep
below the earth

no allusion that I am a small girl

standing huge above

              as Venus climbs eastern sky

the other half lives simply simple carving idols

constructing walls behind which stands

untouchable art

a wealth of gold beneath stone skin

molded by ones hands        +

sharpened tool tongues wedged beneath

right angled corners

to become Michangelo's labor

a girl of solid shape        +        prominence of sponge flesh

left on the pedestal through days of drought        +        dust

              choking on tall walls

Venus pleads for rain smoothing drops to become

                                          supple

                                white marble melts into Tuscany brown

a soluble girl in watercolor

climbs down deference

promenades stumbley stump

growing arms

long of

flesh        +        sinew

                                reaches for the artist

+

                              becomes

              me

              separate as fingers

              one as the same hand

---

--Rebecca Henderson

[email protected]

www.poetryslam.homestead.com