a study of talipes
1. from an aging gazelle
in dance, your growth is
celebrated gravely. you become
a parchment of symmetry.
to me, she gave some rite
of scholarly sacrifice.
it was because of who was living
on my foot. hephaestus. or anyway,
some fetal mistake or another.
but there was no cry deep in the valley
of the earth when she told me to
regulate my limbs to the forming
of pewter
or, anyway,
not to dance.
2. statue of horus
I will say these good things
about that day I wandered the fields
in search of my own face–
when I found it, it was a bird.
This is not to say
it isn’t inhabited by
thirty diverse spirits
and countless backstage
mirrors. But to have
the body of a god
of sticks is almost
a golden swamp of a thing.
It’s better to be a bird
in such circumstances.
3. leg exercises
asymmetrical venus forgot to count
her limbs today. like a spider,
she is known to transform into a void.
her hips are an unmade bed.
she doesn’t know what to name them,
or if they want to be called.
there’s a joke in every crevice.
the doctors don’t know what to do with her.
there’s nothing here to do:
pick one side and
swat the light into it,
the shelled gnats.
this is how mirrors work:
the structure, you see,
involves perfected opposition.
asymmetrical venus
is wrapped in layers of fine gauze
like a well-respected dead body