ninanevermore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ninanevermore) wrote2006-06-03 09:55 pm
ninanevermore) wrote2006-06-03 09:55 pm
Entry tags:
A Poem for the Weekend - Venus
I only post poems on the weekends when I think that everyone is off living their lives and not hanging around on LJ, so they will bother fewer people. Look, I warned you, so you can avoid this one by not clicking on the cut.
This is one of the few pieces of mine that has actually been published, though it was back when I was in college and probably less than 100 people read that publication. Still, it's one of my favorite things that I've written.
When I wrote this I was trying to imagine what it would be like to be one of the women who had stolen my boyfriends and what she would think of my pathetic blubbering if she heard it. I figured she wouldn't be very sympathetic, but that there must be a certain rush and feeling of power to be the one who winds up the winner in that game. I wrote this from that viewpoint - as I imagined it, at least.
That Bitch Venus
When she wrote your names together,
she always connected them
with a heart pierced by an arrow
shot from below,
because, she said, Cupid
is a low-down son-of-a-bitch.
Venus is a bitch
who walks on dried rose petals,
she told me, while sifting her fingers
through a basket of potpourri
made from the roses
you had sent her over time.
Notice, she said, how the red petals
dried into a deeper scarlet,
but the more delicate
white and pink blossoms
only curled up and turned brown.
She asked me if I wanted
to accompany her to your doorstep,
where she planned to dump
her collection of dead flowers
so that you would crush them
when you stepped outside,
and show that Venus
once and for all.
I declined.
Later, I went to your house
and walked over her petals
on my way inside.
A vase of fresh roses
greeted me on the kitchen table,
beside an envelope addressed to me
on which you had written,
"To my Sweet Goddess of Love."
-Nina Erickson
September 1991
© 2006
This is one of the few pieces of mine that has actually been published, though it was back when I was in college and probably less than 100 people read that publication. Still, it's one of my favorite things that I've written.
When I wrote this I was trying to imagine what it would be like to be one of the women who had stolen my boyfriends and what she would think of my pathetic blubbering if she heard it. I figured she wouldn't be very sympathetic, but that there must be a certain rush and feeling of power to be the one who winds up the winner in that game. I wrote this from that viewpoint - as I imagined it, at least.
That Bitch Venus
When she wrote your names together,
she always connected them
with a heart pierced by an arrow
shot from below,
because, she said, Cupid
is a low-down son-of-a-bitch.
Venus is a bitch
who walks on dried rose petals,
she told me, while sifting her fingers
through a basket of potpourri
made from the roses
you had sent her over time.
Notice, she said, how the red petals
dried into a deeper scarlet,
but the more delicate
white and pink blossoms
only curled up and turned brown.
She asked me if I wanted
to accompany her to your doorstep,
where she planned to dump
her collection of dead flowers
so that you would crush them
when you stepped outside,
and show that Venus
once and for all.
I declined.
Later, I went to your house
and walked over her petals
on my way inside.
A vase of fresh roses
greeted me on the kitchen table,
beside an envelope addressed to me
on which you had written,
"To my Sweet Goddess of Love."
-Nina Erickson
September 1991
© 2006