Four Poems
Venus of Willendorf. Jakub Hałun, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Poor Things: A Review
Poor Things is a steampunk retro-futurist whirl through
Victorian England’s land of horse-drawn carriages in
Doctor Godwin’s punked up steam-driven car, a fake
horse in front. In the doc’s fantasy chateau, his doc father
slash-stitched his face into Frankenstein’s and electrocuted
his genitals. Since he now runs the show, he replaces
a dead lady’s brain with her unborn child’s. As Bella’s mind
roars locked inside a woman’s body inside doc’s castle,
the black and white film bursts into full color. As Woman,
her bare nipples and girl legs exude tendresse, lust. She races
down empathy’s shattered stairs, cut off from those suffering
below until she lands in their midst. I sprint to follow this
impossible child woman’s story (she ends up a doctor) as it
answers why I was born and every question I’ll ever ask.
The Polish Rider (Rembrandt, 1655)
“I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world except possibly for The Polish Rider . . .”
– Frank O’Hara, 1971
All I know is the artist painted it
during his bankrupt days: a red-hatted
youth with a pale riding cloak, a quiver
of arrows. Few viewers spot the mace
in his hand as he weighs striking what he
turns to face—a foe the artist may know—
even harder to see the rowdy crew bunched
‘round a fire amid a blur of buildings,
one domed, distant land and tree shapes.
We even overlook godly clouds in murky dusk.
Without fail, our eyes mainly see the rider’s
white steed, its nose pointing forward and
the keen consciousness of a young man guarding
himself from dark forces around him (or within).
The Ballad of Narayama
We fly over snow-covered mountains, huts
snow-heaped, then tuck inside Orin’s. She tends
the fire, a motherless girl, her three sons, village
matters. Children call her a witch with 33 teeth!
At 69, she knocks out her own teeth, pretends she’s weak.
Grasshoppers mate, snakes eat rats whole, rice grows in poor soil.
When her husband disgraced the family, Orin’s eldest, 15, killed him.
Young son smells bad, copulates with a dog; Orin finds an old widow
for him. She exposes a family stealing food—the village men bury
them alive—including the pregnant wife of the middle son.
Now the hardest part. Near 70, Orin readies to go
to Narayama, a long journey up, up, and three mountains away.
Elder son leaves his mother on her prayer mat among
the bones. Vultures circle. Snow begins to fall.
Film by Shõhei Imamura, 1983, Palme d’Or, Cannes.
Set c. 1810, Japan, after story “Narayama bushikō,” 1958
Venus of Willendorf
Who am I to say why her body-forward
stone shape fits so well into a cupped hand
and has lasted thirty-thousand years?
Below bulging breasts and wide belly,
creases show vagina and butt cheeks and
conjure fecundity. Stick-like arms fold over
her bosom. Braided circles of hair frame
a face with no features. Josef Verami
found her 4.4-inch figure just over
a hundred years ago.
Jumping to words on a page, some are porous,
adding gravitas and light. Some chisel away
mass to add meanings.
Maybe her legs once existed.
Her smile has to be imagined.
Jan Garden Castro co-founded River Styx Magazine in 1975. She counts those ’70s & ’80s years with River Styx on the radio, at Duff’s, at the P.M. Series as super memorable, especially editing River Styx Magazine with colleagues and winning the CCLM (now CLMP) Editor’s Award with Quincy Troupe in 1986. Google “Jan Garden Castro” for more.