Portrait of the Artist as Venus Anadyomene

Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not nude.

I’m dressed in overalls, boots, old leather coat and

(if you’re still painting a picture of me in your mind)

drench in one hand, pitchfork in the other.

I’m looking straight at you. Less ‘come hither’ more

‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.’

I’m a modern woman. Out of respect for the genre

(and because I’m writing this stuff) I have great hair.

From Eve to Madonna, always, the main question

is what to do with my arms. Loose at my sides?

Raised up over my head to foreground my breasts

or modestly cupping my pubes? You decide. I can

do kneeling, reclining, upright at a tilt, or thigh deep

wringing bronze tresses into a painterly sea.

Between you and me, mostly I’ll take contraposto

but lose the nymphs; I’m attended by dead sheep.

Meet me half way in this small white space

and I’ll show you a good time girl, a real Goddess,

not love in the abstract, soft porn or cheap romance,

or one of your hostile fractured Cubist tarts

but a multi-dimensional farmyard demoiselle

born from this savoury agricultural soup.

I skim the soft foam perking the slurry’s crust

borne across the lagoon on a tractor-mounted dirt scoop.

Roses shower the barn roofs as I shudder to a halt.

The year-old heifers in the cubicle house shift and shit.

Maybe you find this erotic, maybe not.

I’m not what you expected? Deal with it.

*Contraposto – a pose where the weight rests on one leg, freeing the other, which is bent at the knee