Anchises to Aphrodite

ANCHISES TO APHRODITE


“You are a different woman after this midnight.”
“You were only five foot, two
when you jerked back
The top of the two egg-yellow sheets
covering this eider-down mattress.”
“I have said you looked like a goddess,
and I named several,
You know Artemis, Athena, etc.;
but then I was only using a trope, speaking
figuratively as if from a rhetoric book,
but now, I believe when I use such endearments
now the endearments are literal.”
“Now you are as large as a Swede that Felleni
exaggerated in a poster placed in the middle
of a city.”
“Your blonde hair brushes off the cobwebs
on the ceiling.”
“It is proverbial wisdom that when a mortal
such as a Trojan army officer as I am
has sex with a goddess, the consequence
upsets the Greek myth moral sytem.
The role of dominance had been reversed,
And I will suffer for upsetting
a pre-established order.
I don’t want to suffer,
Be a cripple the rest of my life,
Or in the future with a mortal wife
have children that are born blind.
Aphrodite, have mercy,
Have mercy,
Let me live a normal life to a normal old age.
But let me not suffer all my life,
let my offsprings have to suffer
because I had this one short moment
of supreme happiness.
I beg you, Aphrodite, have mercy.”
Aphrodite said nothing,
but became five feet, two again
And left the room, laughing.


Duane Locke

Posted over on Badosa