She was naked
except for the snails on her legs.
She was dry
except for the morning dew.
She was empty
except for the bird in her belly.
She was milk
except for her fear of soda straws.
She was drawing dirty pictures
in the bath water
and collecting religious symbols
for a cigar box named Wolfgang.
On the threshold of another adventure.
Once upon a time.
In a paint can behind the shed
that she happened to pry open
like that box from the golden age
of decorative boxes,
all hammered and glued shut
by its now dried but once vibrant contents.
Once upon a time the slopes of her body
went unnoticed by the creatures who traveled them.
Anything short of a thunderstorm
was a nonevent, a big ho-hum.
A bucket of chicken slowly spinning
on top of its post
would fill with rain
and then blackbirds
and then blackbirds full of rain.
One of the teenage employees
who prepared the fried chicken
answered the telephone.
Clothed in a red and white uniform
except for those shoes, black as a grackle's heart.
Meanwhile, she was naked,
and the snails were making their way toward
some plastic army men
set up on the hardwood floor.
The one bent over his field radio
had become the weave of his government-issue fatigues.
She had this idea once that she would design
and market plastic fast-food workers,
each at his special task,
each in the polyester smock of his corporation:
Wendy's, Arby's, Taco Bell etc.
She sketched her little people in the rain.
Would she add another?
Or set the sketchbook down?
The suspense became unbearable,
but unbearable or not,
I'd like to buy the rights to her story.
To cast a quirky beauty
who brings such restraint to the role
that we all leave the Cineplex
perplexed.
What just happened here?
A stolen Caravaggio?
If you say so, Chief.
Plastic figurines of the master painters.
Hundreds of the little buggers
with their ruffled shirts and brushes.
Once the bag is open, endless configurations.
The constellations slowly bending in the sky?
I'll take your word for it.
Johannes Vermeer, The Fry Chef and Platoon Sergeant #3
lined up on the knickknack shelf.
She was that which made the snail pop
and forced a colder, more collected
take on the naked body,
one which truly engaged the moment.
She was belly.
She was bubble.
She was face.
She was stop.
And though her world was complete,
my heart still ached
for all those things I thought might happen.
Less typical of love's refuse, the stale calamari rings, wax lips from last Halloween and shards from the dropped glass slipper didn't so much litter the carpet as disguise it. Wine disguised sobriety. Myth disguised history. Love, itself, in Venus's absence was merely survival's disguise. But earlier, when she surveyed it, this room seemed to glisten like the sea, the endless sea. She was naked, primordially so, and never spoke, language disguising each thing it uncovered.
Venus? Before you leave please tell me, where does sex go when it dies? One hand gathers up enough hair to fill the Milky Way. The other proudly unveils the stuff that painters dare not paint. But where are the sexual bits now? The mistakes of a sexual nature? In a box. In the storeroom of The Magic Grove Novelty Company. The funny nose and glasses most of us call genitals.
Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He also edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters.
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