Galatea

 

He took a block of marble and carved away the excess

Shaped it into

A woman.

Let’s be honest here—

Pygmalion carved

A very sexy woman.
Astonishingly beautiful, or so

The poem goes,

With a form that

No living woman

Could possess.

Basically, a life-sized Barbie.

After all, doesn’t Barbie

Have an untenable form?

Waist narrower than her head

Ankles too thin to stand

Back-breaking beach ball breasts?

And we call her

Beautiful.

And Pygmalion, he

Carved her, and he

Loved her.

His statue.

His sex doll.

His marble Barbie.

He loved her form and face

Pined for her

Didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, didn’t work

Just prayed that she would

Be real

Be warm soft hips and breasts and blood and breath

Prayed for nights with her

On woven sheets.

And he got them. He prayed so hard

That the gods gave him his wish:

A living woman

With a form no living woman

Could possess.

But here’s the thing: when Ovid speaks

Of Galatea, Pygmalion’s sculpture

When he describes her sumptuous form

He mentions her swanlike necks

In the plural.

(Or so my Latin teacher says.)

Maybe it’s just a ruse

A literary device

To make the ancient words flow smoothly

Or maybe

Possibly

Pygmalion carved multiple necks.

After all, the poem did say

“A form no living woman

Could possess.”

Who knows what Galatea

Really looked like?

What matters is

Pygmalion and Ovid and even the gods

Thought she was

Beautiful.

Maybe she had tentacles

And multiple heads

A Danish troll-woman or

A hentai monster.

With a beautiful form no living woman

Could possess.

Pygmalion may have

Had a few kinks, but

All we know for certain is that

He created something

Beautiful.