Poetry – Issue 4 | April 2009
Four poems by Suzanne Parker
In the Hall of Greek Antiquities
“Why do all the statues have to be naked?”
—overheard by a boy to his father
It’s the men who shift hands
in their pockets, find a Venus
and linger before the open bay
of the arms, the body smooth
as milk, still as stone.
Meanwhile, behind their backs,
slave boys lift their shirts,
athletes lunge, lift a world,
a head, breath heaving in their stomachs
as, I imagine, the boy has felt
in the huddle after peeling himself
off his first tackle and now this hunter
steps off the dragon’s neck,
fire wrapped around his back,
and thrusts out a hand, finger
pointed at him and why
does the mother above him—
for they are all really mothers
and virgins in their blank
skin— why doesn’t she feel
the hand raised at him
and why does his own mother,
lost among the statues, not come
and lead him outside, into the sun,
for an ice cream at that stand
they’d passed hours ago
before entering the Louvre.
About the author
Suzanne Parker has recently returned from a month in Paris where ate a lot of croissants and wrote poems about Framingham, Massachusetts. Suzanne was a finalist for the New Rivers Press Book Award in 2008, and her work has recently appeared in A Gathering of the Tribes, The MacGuffin, NYC BigCityLit, Poetry Motel, Rattapallax and others.
Next in Poetry: Two poems by Lily Iona MacKenzie
Previously in Poetry: Public Interest
