Aphrodite in Spangles

Aphrodite in Spangles

(a quote has yet to be attributed.  The Aphrodite in Spangles line comes from an Anne Carson translation of a Sappho poem that I will attribute more appropriately when I find the poem.  "Paler than grass" is also a Sappho line.  I was inspired to write this poem in a reading workshop taught by Judith Roche on The Love Poem)

She arrives in spangles

in her gold Chevrolet car

her nails painted blood-red

My crazy heart-my self

surrounded by night-maidens

milk blister faces

I became paler than grass after our fight

We tousled over who had more sleep

The baby woke again

that wailing mandrake girl

You once said to me

“You would wish little, be

carried sweeter.”

You did not know I'd demand

a lot of you

I was carried kicking

heavy as a mill stone

the night I was drunk

and drowning in the river

But today we love grown older

Aphrodite arrives in spangles

She is fat and good

Buddha-good

and we both laugh

When you must be gone

my mind sings much

In the dark neural pathways

of my skull, buzz a hym

as tender as a veined crocus

for our terrible animosity

those memories

leaked away

and what was left was good

caught in the light

Lucy Simpson, Seattle, 12/2008