Crouching Aphrodite or Learning to Love the Unlovable by Iris E. McPherson

“Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind”

-Sappho translated by Anne Carson

She crouches upon the pedestal

that presents her in all her rotted,

worn away, and lively beauty.

She is forever doomed to stillness,

yet resting in her huddled cavity is a softness,

which radiates from the dusty stone like salted waves.

From her cracked face violated by the thieves

of time, to the missing arms chopped

from her figure. My starving eye drinks in and devours

the holy sight of her stomach

with its rolling folds

that belong to a body

just like me.