Venus of Willendorf

MPJ

by Colleen Abel

Venus of Willendorf That which is most is most unbearable a body should be a length of string a spine a taut yard of twine the shadow a pillar of dark marble Why must you speak like that: every dark thing accessed, every excess Unseemly the handfuls of flesh I think what you really mean But the body is a planet you tilt on its axis spinning zero miles per hour at the poles a thousand at the sweated equatorial Fecund as a flooded valley I plunder you gasp-wracked Ungirdle unstone is I am ochre-soaked cornucopiate

Colleen Abel is a disabled writer living in the Midwest. Her work has appeared in venues such as Lit Hub, Cincinnati Review, The Southern Review, Colorado Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Her first poetry collection, REMAKE, won the 2015 Editors Prize from Unicorn Press. She has two chapbooks, HOUSEWIFERY (dancing girl press) and DEVIANTS, a hybrid work about stigmatized bodies that won Sundress Publications’ 2016 Chapbook Prize. She has been awarded fellowships from UW-Madison’s Institute for Creative Writing and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. She is the Poetry Editor of Bluestem magazine and Assistant Professor of English at Eastern Illinois University.

Note: “Venus of Willendorf” is reprinted with the author’s permission from the chapbook DEVIANTS (Sundress Press, 2016).