dancing girl press, 2012
$7.00
Juliet Kerico holds an MA in Literature and Film from Case Western Reserve University, and an MLS from the University of Illinois. Her poems have appeared in OVS Magazine, Interrobang?!, The Broad River Review, and Off Channel. She is a 2011 Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest winner.
Birth of Venus
All art is quite useless. –Oscar Wilde
Your prized Assumption of Madonna:
this wistful silent mist, this pristine
whisperer, shielding you from horrors
deep inside. A fetish turned obscene:
flushed lips, cat eyes painted charcoal thick,
prurient spirits quick with the fuck
you. So find some Botticelli fake
sculpted to a willing wasted wreck
who'll stay. Dab a sterile scent behind
each ear, inculcate the mind with same.
With unshed shell intact and flawless rind
well-preserved: this statue keeps you sane.
Choose lines already soft, then soften;
peroxide disappears in cotton.
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