Venus de Milo's Fabricated History

So much talk of arms, but what of
her fingers curled fastball-style on
Paris' apple? What of her face
modeled on a whore, one of the
hetaerae who walked free at market,
to symposiums, drank men's wine?
What of the face sculpted to know
more than wives and say nothing?
A brothel marquee in her former life,
she balanced the apple on her thumb,
southpaw promise. Whatever patrons
lacked at home they looked for
in her clavicle, pockmarked since
the year 1000. Those pores open
like craters until they swallow time:
they sing always of hours missed,
the children waiting at home, how
someone dear has died without us
knowing. In front of the prefab crag
in the Louvre, a woman thinks
Venus looks just like her lover.
A child is bored by her blankness.
A man says her breasts look fake,
I say nothing, and I'm missing her
apple, bracelet, wrists, cuticles.
We all left dinner burning, we
avoid each other's eyes, we can
bury ourselves in this stone.
I've left a life undone, so
rather than let ciphers remain,
I endow her, signpost for all sorts
of snakeoil cures, with one finger
pointing to expectation's nest,
in moving disrepair like
a coastline imperceptibly dented
yet rendered by the Aegean.

*Bruce Bond's collections of poetry include Blind Rain (LSU, forthcoming), Cinder (Etruscan, 2003), The Throats of Narcissus (U. of Arkansas, 2001), Radiography (BOA, 1997), The Anteroom of Paradise (QRL, 1991), and Independence Days (Woodley, 1990). His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry, The Yale Review, The Georgia Review, and other journals, and he has received numerous honors including fellowships from the NEA, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and other organizations. Presently he is Professor of English at the University of North Texas and Poetry Editor for American Literary Review.