another erotic poem | Dear Aphrodite (17)

written by willa beale & the Great God Pan

Author’s Note

happy valentine’s day.

it’s about as useless as it comes.

hold them close.

move on.

love is not a thing to whore.

hold them close.

we are not long for this world.

— wb

---

another erotic poem

o, sweet river; wide-open, gushing, savoured,
i linger, burrowed deep, overwhelmed by us.

why are you impossible to resist?
why do you consecrate me?

in the furrows, the nectar of your needing
and my lapping mouth receding to meet yours

something there isn't in me, seeing
when you look at me and finish me

i consider you. i consider you.
what can't i consider in you?

intimacy is an immediate invention.
shut up. kiss me. kiss me. lower.

lay down. undress. let the candles quake.
i remember once we were animals. do you?

i taste myself on you. can you taste me?
you are coiling, uncoiling—a brook in the rain.

nothing will ever be the same. i want you.
be an animal, feisty and feasting.

let nothing remain.

---

Letter from a Shepherd, from the Underworld

Dear Aphrodite,¹

I consider you.

When Selene paints the night and the shredded shadows flee below the haunted trees, I consider you and your dark form over me and your lips and the warmth of you.

I consider what you said to me in the gloom when the soughing of the fig leaves overhead threatened to drop those wet ripe fruit over us.

Your breathless voice is an ember in my memory. Every space of my thought touched by your words is set aflame by a passion I cannot convey. I consider your words at dawn—when I know Eos exposes you—and how I need you then. All my mornings now pass in consideration of you. I feel your fingers coiling on my haunch, my hair bristling where you were. You have stuck to me like honey. I wish […] my fingers […] sticky with you.

[…]

…and I (consider) your mocking (illegible), my hand around your wrist as you held me at a pace and wondered if you’d let me in.

(You) let me in.

[…]

…when lower on me and preening, I forgot about all my sufferings. You are such a sweet thing. I miss you. I miss our long walks in Arcadia and the charm of your company (and Hermes’). My katabasis has been hardened by the lack of you.

Here, nature has atrophied. Hades keeps naught but the damned. There is no darling thrush calling to me from narrow branches. I may as well be dead. It is only Kore keeping me company. I believe she finds camaraderie, tenured along with me. I pity her. Hades is ignorant, cold, severe. He corals the dead and keeps them: a solemn hoard. He is no leader, only an unseen hand. I guess I pity him, too.

(illegible)

(I) consider your unseen hands moving over me, Aphrodite. I hope Demeter comes early. I need your mouth, priestess. Forgive me. Honey lingers, cravings abide.

(When/if) you write me, tell me you’re gushing for me, please. As all the Seas, know I am for you.

Your sweetest friend
Pan, the Great

1. From Fragment 17. Translated by a great horned owl.