artwork: ralph murre
by
Kelley J. White ~
Venus de Milo Goes Bowling
and
you gotta love her, she’s just no good at it,
but
she gamely stumps forward, ball pressed
between
her chin and breast, and it keeps falling
out,
clunk, clunk, and rolling in the gutter
and
she’s up against Michelangelo’s David
with
all that long-limbed, lazy power
concentrated
in his wrist, looking out
of
half-closed eyes at his own powder blue ball
and
the Discus Thrower, wired tight as a Banzai
tree,
all speed and follow-through, and she
would
like to drum her fingers, she would like
to
chew her nails, she would like just this once
to
tear her hair out of that classic bun, then
the
doors open on the outside furnace heat
and
in comes Kali, on a tongue of white flame,
Kali,
in her Blue Avenger Aspect, and
Kali
she shifts her face, click, click, serpentine,
to
each side of two mudra’d hands, catching
our
girl’s eye, with that Ray Harryhausen classic
movie
animation motion, then
whack
whack whack, whip whip whip, smack smack smack,
strike,
she rolls a prefect string with the house black
ball
~
previously published in Ze -
Books
