the birth of venus
brody mcgee
after Botticelli's ‘The Birth Of Venus’
the sea coughs her up
like a vestigial apology,
a calcification of samson
girls caught
on kitchen scissors.
she watches the true lover's hair form
matt
on
matt
on
matt
waiting for some mother's hand
with some cheap plastic brush
to tug out the briny clumps
to say, i know what you are
just a girl
like me.
but she is a eunuch's daughter
presented, damp and limbless.
she is an aphrodisiac fished
from the drowning pit,
fettered to the motherline,
the ancestral dowsing rod.
the pudica stalks fold
into a generational request:
TOUCH-ME-NOT
now, we're left out to dry and dreaming
of stabbing daddy's eyes with salt pillars
but it is easier to sublimate.
to sink into silt mattresses,
to breathe
and get high on the carbon
dioxide, shared with all our sisters
mouth-to-mouth with these pebble
pocketed ophelias
floating by.
Brody (she/her) is a teenaged poet and student from rural Scotland. She aims to explore themes of girlhood, the experience of women, and mother-daughter relationships. She is particularly inspired by classic art and literature, and mythology. Brody has an upcoming publication in Petrichor Gazette.
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