Bryan D. Price

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The toilet of Venus

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There’s a photo of you dancing 

or at least pretending to dance. 

I avoid it as I might avoid 

certain masterpieces 

concerning massive crosses or 

the Madonna who we’re 

taught to love in all her oneiric 

forms including the tempera ones 

done on scraps of wood or

the sacred heart suspended in 

the open chest cavity, glowing as 

thirty-three candles glow in the 

gutter for the untimely death of 

a martyr. You know the one, still-

life with upturned arms, self-

portrait in ecstasy. The Roman 

writer Pliny tells the story of four 

sculptors who made a permanent 

fracture in time. Although this 

anecdote may be apocryphal the 

fracture still dampens all my dreams.

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