Links for Joseph Biondi
Two poems from “Venus Examines Her Breast” by Maureen Seaton
Venus Examines Her Breast
She’s pissed at all the minor milk ducts
flaring in her one remaining breast. Oh
shit, she says, and sets her chin
as ages flip in mock somnambulism, too
lean of mind to expect much from a goddess.
Oh stadiums of light, oh babble.
Aspiration takes seconds, the lump
a syringe of cloudy lemon soup. Look,
says the Doc, Now aren’t we a happy camper?
Venus packs her tools for Rome where
everything is so expensive yet familiar.
She poses and sculpts in turn, naked
as a snake-shaped scar, chipping slowly
at 17th century stone. Nothing
gets better than this, she thinks: Nipple,
lymph glands, bowling arm flexed
to capacity. I can shift out of first!
Making love, she reminds herself to stay
anchored in the mirrored now. You’re
gorgeous, she says, flushing, leaning in.
Pele
Here is the buzz, the lament, the horror of overturned hazmats
and all the trickling fear
and yet July 4th comes to Albuquerque the same way it comes
to Chicago, and the women
cook pigs and hens and everywhere, the smell of slaughter.
As if they might slip off Acoma and be caught by a Franciscan
priest which would make
them lucky citizens and him a hero.
Sarah thought as they approached the table’s edge munching fry
bread and pumpkin cookies:
There is the bone goddess and the corn goddess and the goddess
who dwells on the mesa.
She tried to find the volcanoes but kept not finding them as they
would mirage
then disappear as she got close.
The earth flumes and speeds, moves in a glut of non-ego, non-
movied beauty.
Rinconada, Boca Negra, the glass dump at the base of the volcanoes
where bats kept missing them in the near-dark.
Elmer said anger is a waste of time, it only made him hoarse in 1970,
Alcatraz,
when he was brave and young.
He said that if America hadn’t used Navajo in WWII we’d all be
speaking Japanese right
now and added it was a good thing we dropped the bombs.
She wondered if he might be testing her,
or if his anger had turned to fossil and mummy and petroglyph.
Her body sweat in unusual places, cant and vinegar, that poison
what’s-its-name.
Wherever she walked: lava.
Read "Fickle Myths," three linked stories by Maureen Seaton and Neil de la Flor
See Maureen Seaton’s art, poetry and an interview at http://www.scene360.com/STORYboard_interview_seaton.html
"Venus Examines Her Breast" is available from Carnegie Mellon University Press at http://www.cmu.edu/universitypress