Cloaca Maxima

Any, every, thing that was exposed

goes underground and is washed into the Tiber.

This is what some people do

with faces, burying. You see them,

the heavy ones, chests like rivers, their heads

bowed down with great

antlers of thought invisible.

After many seasons, the fronts of their bodies

terribly developed to carry them.

Venus of the Drains, the woman with the scum

at the corners of her mouth who talked

for a long time, scarred by burning, perilous thin,

then told us we had made her day.

It is seen, what should not be seen. It is I sees it.

Shameful, to feel so heavily the shame

of others — to hear and echo

that note always waiting in the voice to be sung.

Do I make it happen

to her by having

face and chest that wash with red?