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KOMUNYAKAA, Yusef


Venus of Willendorf

She's big as a man's fist,

Big as a black-pepper shaker

Filled with gris-gris dust,

Like two fat gladiolus bulbs

Grown into a burst of twilight.

Lumpy & fertile, earthy

& egg-shaped, she's pregnant

With all the bloomy hosannas

Of love-hunger. Beautiful

In a way that forces us to look

At the ground, this squat

Venus in her braided helmet

Is carved from a hunk of limestone

Shaped into a blues singer.

In her big smallness

She makes us kneel.