Venus Frigida, by Jenna Le

Venus Frigida, by Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish), 1614.

Venus Frigida

                   “Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus” -Terence

The Frozen Venus is the image caption,
a homage to the jaundiced Latin maxim,
“All love grows cold when food and drink are absent.”

Depicted in a sickly green-lit landscape,
the fair-flanked goddess squats on balled red fabric
and hugs her wind-nipped trunk to fend off gangrene

from frostbite, while her infant son emits a rattly
cough in the vicinity of her waxen
knees. She pointedly ignores a goat-eared man-beast,

an umber muscled satyr, hovering blackly
mere inches from the pair, a bulging basket
on his arm.—I don’t buy it for a fraction

of a second. I’ve been cold before. If Madam
Venus were really cold, she’d grab that damask
she’s sitting on and wrap it round her fat-knobbed

back. I’ve been cold. If I were in this tableau,
I’d grab pale Cupid, press him to my mammaries,
absorbing all his heat. Good Lord, I’d gladly

tackle the brown goat man himself and wrassle
him to the dirt. That Terence was a hack:
if love were great enough, it’d conquer. Come back.

Jenna Le

​Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A
History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Anchor & Plume Press, 2016). Her
poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translations appear or are forthcoming in
AGNI Online, Bellevue Literary Review, The Best of the Raintown Review,
Denver Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, The Village
Voice, and elsewhere. Her website is http://jennalewriting.com/