Pygmalion

One expects a certain raggedness—

cracked and broken, bleeding in bad weather—

but clay has kept them clean, unlined and supple,

brushing the dust from the sheet

on which he makes his petition

begging the goddess relieve him of  her blessing.

Cyprus sweats and sings through the window:

pigeons chasing boys who chased them,

women whispering the name he kisses

with a desiccating gesture: cool breath

through lips pursed like the papyrus

reed unrolled to hold the seething

sentiment she’s cozened. Her fault:

the suppurating star his cock

keeps seeking, the tumid tit that taunts

the tongue he tucks behind the teeth

he clenches. Her fault: the penetrating

scent staining his thumb’s

dumb hammer, witless peen he pressed

through beetled myrtle blossoms. He liked to feel

them give and pop, to watch

flame dissolve each busted cup,

kneeling in the temple as the priest

intoned the blessing. Mother of  Desire,

wheedling goddess: what prayer salves

the sucking wound, slips a man

free from fervid orbit of  the cunt’s

collapsing star? What he’d asked

was what he could constrain: an alabaster

virgin’s bashful glance, not this yielding

flesh flushed red with summer heat

and creased where she lay on a hem,

the line like the slip of his knife. Not the humid

breath that turns the chamber damp, the errant

hairs bristling her chin, her nipples

sprouting wire. Not the tongue

flopping boneless in the mouth

he had not carved. Something like a thought

unfurled behind her eyes, consciousness

bloomed like a dark drop of ink, then panic

when she had no words. What did she want

him to say. That when he was young

he saw a sparrow nicking fruit

and swallowing it whole? He still feels

the pit lodged in his throat, airless

terror swelled like a flag, still recoils

when hunger drives its chisel to the stone,

remembers tugging at his mother’s skirts

then the humming lump he found

buried in her thigh. By summer she was

ashes mixed with sand where girls

tiptoe to the cliffs above the sea

and giggling cast their votives to the surf,

dreaming the goddess will bless

their burgeoning desire. Bitter the furrowed

shell that sheathes the seed, the flesh

in which the germ is lodged, the small

machine from which a murderous

appetite unwinds. What the surgeon cut from her

had hair and half a crooked smile.

Teratoma it was called, monster-swelling.

Camphor calling forth the blood.

In the streets the children shriek

finders-keepers and the sound

from the next room is fingernails on slate:

she is learning how to say his name.