Venus with a Mirror
after Titian
 |
| Titian, Venus with a Mirror, c. 1555 |
Love expects her own radiance to last
forever.
Her large soft body,
doughy belly and arms
no woman today would want,
but the face—
supermodel gorgeous,
glorious
in golden curls braided with pearls—
looks over her shoulder.
Behind
her
a cherub’s about to bonk her over the head
with a wreath.
Beside
her
another sturdy cherub holds up
the heavy mirror.
Between them
the vertical
slice of her
framed by the mirror
doesn’t match
one large dark eye
spooked
like a horse
the flesh beneath it sags
She
sees
what any woman sees
in a mirror
her worst
The old woman
rising toward her
a goblin shark
The
dark wood frame
closing
a coffin lid.
Rembrandt’s Lucretia *
 |
| Rembrandt van Rijn, Lucretia, 1666 |
crumpling like a child’s about to cry.
Her half-shadowed face
haloed in lush hair and subtle gems.
Her gold robes spread like a bell
around her, white chemise
open from breastbone to belly,
echoing the slit, the cureless
wound she’s carved on her
house fortress mansion temple tree.
The loving dagger still
clutched in her right hand,
she’s painted the unseen
on her side in good red blood—
Vagina: Latin for scabbard.
In Tintoretto’s Origin of the Milky Way **
Jupiter coasts in, thrusting
baby Hercules at
Juno’s breast. She sprawls
 |
| Tintoretto, ca.1575–1580 |
entangled in cloud. Four
cherubim zoom in with bow
and arrows; her peacocks
watch. Shining rays
spray from her nipples:
the right streaming down to plant
lilies in earth; the left shooting
up—past the bastard
infant’s head and her bangled
arm upflung into sky—
to flower in ten golden stars.
All the faces, even her mask
of perfection, gaze
at that miracle of milk. Startled
awake, she leans back,
bare foot treading
thundercloud, one hand open
above all their heads,
as if she, goddess of childbirth,
had just flung new-
born stars. The astonishment
of milk arcing out
into space, her stranger body
showering in spontaneous creation.
The Brank *
Lithograph,
1984, by Leon Golub, Am. b. 1922
In the museum of beautiful nudes,
why do I choose the most hideous?
I wanted those etchings
of women growing out of trees,
the lines of their bodies mirroring
hills, or boughs, or pears . . .
But this—shit brown, red
smeared like blood—this ugliness
won’t shut up. Did they really
have those bunny ears, like some jokey
S & M costume, or Madonna’s next tour?
Brank, [etymology unknown. from Ir. brancas, halter?]
vb. (obs.)
To prance; to hold up and toss the head;
applied to horses as spurning the bit.
[Scot. & Prov. Eng.]
gossip’s bridle
dame’s bridle
hag’s harness
witch’s bridle
scold’s helm
a Brydle
for a curste queane
In a vast profusion of fantastical and sometimes artistic
styles
A locking iron muzzle, metal mask, or cage,
hinged to enclose the
head
often of great
weight
The victim’s mouth was clamped shut
by an iron band under
the chin
a flat piece of iron
forced
inside her mouth, sometimes sharpened
to a point, or
studded with spikes,
spurs, or a rowel
The whole contraption
fastened round the neck with a heavy padlock
The designs were left up to the imagination
of the blacksmith
Some shaped like pigs’
heads
Some had asses’ ears
and huge
spectacles
Some,
a bell on a spring to draw jeers
Some, a chain—
Ancient houses had a hook fixed beside the fireplace
if she nagged too
much the town
gaoler would bring
the community bridle
Every respectable settlement in England or Scotland had one
Sometimes she was drawn around town on a cart
in the ‘gagging
chair’ or ‘tewe’
Sometimes the bit forced blood out
at the slightest
movement
of the head or
twitch of the halter
Sometimes she was led on a rope like a pack animal
Sometimes she was chained to the market-cross
in the town square
Sometimes she was smeared with feces and urine
Sometimes wounded fatally,
especially her
breasts and between her legs
And padlocked on women convicted of witchcraft
so they could not
scream their horrible curses
while burning at the
stake—
All the nudes are speechless.
* from Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life, The Word Works,
2011
** From The Origin of the Milky Way, Gival Press, 2007
Barbara Ungar has published four books of poetry. Her most
recent, Immortal Medusa, was chosen as one of Kirkus Reviews' Best
Indie Poetry Books of 2015. Prior books include Charlotte
Brontë, You Ruined My Life and The Origin of the Milky
Way, which won the Gival Prize, an Independent Publishers Silver Medal,
the Adirondack Center for Writing Poetry Award, and a Hoffer award. Ungar is professor
of English at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, where she coordinates
the MFA program.
