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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