Tall Zeus, forgive the mean aspect of this standard and static depiction your admirers should find problematic: squared-off toenails, small ears, some parts one shan’t mention – for you hold the lightning bolt – but you don’t; even that is gone from this bronze copy.
All-seeing Zeus, overlook how we come close: your frown, your sinews, your ankles resemble the elderly athlete the museum claims this figure might be. You love mortality.
Dear Zeus. Our clouded heads forgot: the copy, and the copier, sportsman, model, statue, maker, are your originals. Through you we move. Through us, you move.
Lord of lightning, spinal fire that sexes the brain, nuclear waste: a great many feathers puncture my breast from within; as I rip, ridding myself of them, finding I cannot free myself, they vault outwards. Like everything, I am in your grasp and also flying.
It strikes me you are sometimes kind.
On the first reading I shuddered as the feathers thrust through inside the poet and listener. On the second reading my dear friend Pegasus came riding in. I never thought of his wings as feathered, before. I will do now though.
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