Plaster Life-Size Reproduction of the Venus de Milo at the Indiana University Memorial Union

Thirty years ago, one lonesome Saturday night, I ran a finger
up the fold of your plaster chiton and

scribbled there in faint quavery pencil a tiny heart transfixed

by a tiny arrow. Beauty incarnate! Help me with my girls!
Fat chance. Armless and blank-eyed,

what good did you ever do me, just standing there mute

and off-white, a cool blank imbecile
oblivious to the blab and thrum of appetites unappeasable?

Ah, but I miss youth’s vapidity, its squeal and rum-tum-tum
and all those blubbering hithers and yons,

so I guess it’s good to see you’re still hulking over the lobby
decades later, tits out and not yet banished

for anachronistic indecency. Apparently someone dusts you
and sponges away the tiny penciled hearts

transfixed by tiny penciled arrows. I’ve grown old, ma’am.

But don’t be fooled by this stiff-kneed supplicant: haggard
and pinched, I’m still twitching, dogged

by the shades of impossible loves both anciently botched

and newly fletched. So it seems I’m forever yours, harried
and hied, a decaying iota fingering your stiff

unyielding hem, a squint at work on the skirt’s divine zipper.

by Michael Derrick Hudson