Dragged herself out of bed.
Slept two thousand years.
She looked a wreck.
In the mirror she said,
"By Juno look at me!
I look like the living dead,
like the arse of Cerberus,
the crotch of Pluto,
and with the legs of Arachne —
two hairy spindle sticks,
two fleshy pipe cleaners
all bent up and skewed.
"No, no, no," she cried,
"this just won't do.
I once was more beautiful
than Earth herself.
Now I'm a slum,
a shacked-up shanty town."
So she reached out;
with one engulfing swoop
she tore up the trees
and used them for rollers,
grabbed at a passing shark
and its fins were a razor
with which she duly shaved her legs.
Then, with acacia sap and pampas grass,
waxed her bikini line,
her upper lip too, and then,
when she'd finished her shaving and scraping,
crimping and cutting,
she admired herself in the full–length mirror,
and then she starved.
Didn't eat for forty days.
Spent what she saved
on new clothes and shoes —
a small, black Versace,
$300 Jimmy Choos.
She managed to get down
to a petite eight stone.
At which point she threw up.
All the vengeance and greed
that made her so fat?
She yelled and she spat.
And then, when she was done,
only seven stone six,
but still not enough.
She blamed herself
for her enormous rear end.
She cursed herself
for her two flat backs.
So, flicking through a women's mag,
she came across a dubious ad
that was just what she needed.
She ripped it out and dialled the number
and yes they could squeeze her in Friday
and not, it's highly confidential of course!
Friday came.
It rained. Venus,
in head–scarf and dark glasses,
stepped down from the number 32.
She checked the address.
This couldn't be it;
so small, so poky, so dirty
and so dark.
She took a seat under a broken fan.
Took a number and waited
and waited and waited
and waited.
Then, Venus?
and, Would you come through?
She clutched her handbag
and tucked her face in her scarf,
checked no–one had heard
and went through.
The consultant was kindly,
but overweight and squat.
His hands were all clammy and hot
as Venus shook them and sat down.
Her body cramped.
Her stomach turned
as the doctor, like a tailor,
got out plastic, blue markers
and tattooed his proposals all over
her soft, milky, white breasts.
After wards he took a red and scored
a love–heart on her buttocks,
huge and pendulous.
Two months later they undid the bandages.
when Venus looked in the mirror she screamed,
"I look ugly!
What are these scars and lacerations?
And bruising? I look blood–shod.
I'm a fucking fractured Icarite.
Where is my beauty? What have you done?
What done?"
Whence she covered her reflection and smashed it.
Digging her nails into her chest,
she ripped a hole,
but instead of the thousand-petalled
bloody expectancy, came the unfamiliar,
slow and sinister ooze of silicone.
"Great Juno!" she roared,
"Why won't you let me bleed?"
And Juno heard on her cloud and looked down
and, although swept with pity,
could do nothing
for she didn not understand
where she was
and who her god was.
Meanwhile on Earth,
Venus rain wailing ward to ward,
breaking mirrors with her fists
while unraveling her scalp's weave,
until her hands were matted with hair,
sticky with silicone and wet with tears,
but still she could not bleed.
Exhausted, she gave in.
She went white.
Paler and paler every night,
until translucent to the eye
and cold to the touch;
one of those ugly glass figurines rocking
on the edge of sanity's mantlepiece.
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