Venus de Milo, or Why No One Ever Asks Me for Ekphrasis

The lack of upper

limbs is not the first

thing that I notice. You make a hasty,

sexual assumption, that I’m fawning

over breasts, the slope of her

naked hip, the fact her garment’s

sliding off like it’s the climactic

close of burlesque.

What she was doing with

her arms is speculation.

Greeks are the masters of

such. Maybe elbowing her way

up to the front of the

falafel line, or Eve-like with a

fig or nectarine—apples are

so cliché—

tired of taking the rap for

the plunge of men, their silly

idiocies,

believing it’s not what’s there

that matters but what isn’t:

tattoos on each wrist,

which hint of her absconsion—

her outstretched thumb

imparts that she is wearied

of the Louvre, of Aphrodite 

postulations,

assured she’s riding shotgun

in the chariot that picks her up—

smoking like Lévesque or Kerouac;

a map of the Pyrenees,

lodged halfway down her

shapely, marble ass.

Andreas Gripp

August 17, 2026

Venus de Milo, sculpted by Alexandros of Antioch (The Louvre Museum)