Dead White Greek Guys Debut in Technicolour, by Laura D. Weeks

Dead White Greek Guys Debut in Technicolour

After long silence, marble speaks.
No longer Helen Keller quiet, 
prisoned in cool sepulchres of stone,
still-lipped, eyes vacant 
as an empty parking lot,

a race of fair, fierce women strides
into our field
of vision, shaking millennial dust
from shapely sandaled feet.  

Proud Artemis, clairoled, curled and crowned,
steps resolutely forth,
mantle tipped in gold and salmon, eyes firmly set
on a seat in the Senate.

Sweet Phrasikleia of the dancing eyes,
flesh fresher than the day she died,
fingers her red-maddered robe,
smiles gravely as she shuffles off her epitaph.  

And it ain’t just the ladies servin’ looks.
An archer in harlequin tunes his bow.
Alexander rocks a gilded lion’s helm,
spits a Persian on his spear tip,

stares him down with small mean eyes.
The room erupts in sound:
roaring reds and screaming yellow ochres,
walkin’ bass of cool Egyptian Blue.

From every corner, eyes flick open.
Obsidian chips rake the room,
skewer our unlovely limbs,
our worm-curved vertebrae, follow
as we slouch towards the exit. ​

Laura D. Weeks

Laura D. Weeks is a recovering academic who moved West and moved on.  Originally a Slavist with a PhD from Stanford University, she has turned her hand to a variety of more diverse and more rewarding pursuits:  translating, editing, consecutive interpreting and running a piano studio,  Weeks’ Wunderkinder.  Her literary translations have appeared in Russian Literature Triquarterly, The Literary Review, South Central Review and the new renaissance.  She coedited and translated  for the anthology Crossing Centuries:  The New Generation in Russian Poetry (Talisman House Press, 2000). Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals including the Atlanta Review, Claudius Speaks, The Comstock Review,  Journal of Kentucky Studies, Passager, Pegasus, Mudfish, Nimrod, the new renaissance and the Worcester Review.   It has also been anthologized in All We Can Hold, published by Sage Hill Press.   Her poem “What Bones Want” was a finalist for the Rash Award.  “A Hand by Any Other Name” won honorable mention in the Zero Bone poetry competition.   She is the author of two chapbooks, Deaf Man Talking and The Mad Woman.