Venus Italica Never Asked to Be Beautiful

After Frank O’Hara’s ‘Having a Coke With You’

by Eliana Berger

“Our relation to you is the same as/that between abstraction and metaphor/between the idea of a clear lake/and the citing of the lake to describe/a clear idea.”

—Sarah Alvio,“Swimming”

so she’s gathering her clothes

and trying and to get the hell out of the Met

trying to find a decent outfit and maybe a nice bath

and maybe even a real love

that doesn’t feel like glances from across a red museum rope

or mortals searching for a god.

Venus Italica just wants to stroll through the Frick and the sprawling parks

and every bookshop on the East Side

with someone who’ll laugh at statues with her

and talk about what it means to love someone

up close.