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rib envy


by Jerry Ratch


 

Flowers I didn't like God or else nature must have had some brief happiness over. But it's just forgetfulness for an old goddess like me, goddess of the moon, of hunting, of chastity once, since now I have changed. My opened flowery bosom went on to become some god's weight, not airy as it once was, but borrowed and lent mutually from one to another of the world's unused stone hearts, well-known for their supremacy.

 

Seducers of whatever, each and all. But they did not capture this old muse's forbidden new daughters. It was to youth, and that alone, that the songs were sung to. And I remember how they let the songs sob from the mouth that so applauds youth, and that is all. The muscles of youth, the continual moisture there, the fair-haired, Homeric, not this old goddess I've become accustomed to.

 

Maybe it's just rib jealousy, rib envy as I see them passing me by, speaking the called gods name by name. I was them once, myself. Deity, spirit, demon, foreigner, stranger. Calling on the light deity to laugh aloud, transparent, and be once again joyous in one's own flesh. Is that so much to ask? With the golden flower between my legs getting rambunctious, lawless, like an unnamed robber you came, and the unspent sea still hasn't sent your last, ever since.

 

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