Issue 2: Penelope Scambly Schott

Fertility Goddess, Malta, circa 3000 BC

     Lifted hem of the breasted goddess

     like a curved basket for wild barley,

     and under her clay skirt, the mystery

     of gender, slit of she-who-brings-forth

Nobody really explains sex — the apparatus

of lilies, devices of spiders, the complex dance

of each in its kind: the condor’s stiff strut to woo

a snake-necked mate.  At age two-and-a-half,

my clever grandson had to ask: Is it only ladies

who have those bumpy-out things?

I should have shown him this figurine, told him,

Here is your goddess -– She has made you

and will rule your life, and then, this softly, set

her down, a promise on his small, hot palm.

--Penelope Scambly Schott

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