Some Stones Hurt
I was ten years old
when I saw the Venus de Milo
posing on clean gray tile.
Shutter clicks were going off
like car alarms.
And I was ashamed of her stone.
Of the air where her arms
were destined to be.
I wondered why she had no scars.
If she hated the eyes --
their rabid dogs, their
pigeon-dropping cloying orbs.
I wanted to give her my clothes.
Pass her a bottle of glue.
“She’s broken,” I said to my aunt.
“Why is she here -- in a place of respect?”
No answer emerged from her tongue.
I thought about my missing leg,
its carcass and its animal.
Later I would share her shape.
Duck cameras like a waiting knife
pressed to a throat of crumbling sand.
She must have taken a fall.
“Someday we’ll chat,” I said to her,
“over a meal of oysters and art
about the presence
of grit in the shell,
about the impotent rage.”
by Janet I. Buck
Tags: amputee Buck poetry
