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Prosthetic Gods (cover art by Sri Nash Parker) was published by the indomitable Rane Arroyo in February, 2008, as the first in his line of Winged City Chapbooks: an imprint of his New Sins Press. After Rane's passing, Unlikely Books took over publication.
Prosthetic Gods is a collection of twenty-one poems by our Publisher, Jonathan Penton. Check out these selections:
Sin of the Calf
Knowing that g-d is found in fucking
That the fuckers don’t matter at all
I still try to worship your face
Still look to your actions for my body’s use
Your random passions for somebody’s truth
Beautiful, broken darling
Goddess soaked in filth
I dump your shit
On the woman I keep
Just to see what I can make grow
Maror
Every night, I think of your betrayal
And the bitterness floods my bag
to form a heavy shelter
That protects me from my enemies
That warms me in dead desire
And every morning, I tear my shelter down
I think only of the warmth of your body
So that I might freeze in the desert sun
I carve your name into the flesh of murderers
To share with them the freshness of my wounds
Venus walks among us, invisible and stalking.
Men are not her object.
Venus picks women. She chooses them carefully.
They never get away.
Venus picks women. She does not wait ‘til they have grown.
She murders their parents.
Parents do not befit a god.
She puts them on the street.
She puts them into alleys.
She puts them in the hands of the state.
She puts them someplace they’ll run from,
and she destroys whatever they try to run to.
Venus rapes women. She ravages their faces
destroys their hands
mutilates their feet
and when she’s ruined every inch of them save their orifices
she sends a mortal to finish the job
Venus destroys women
usually, Venus kills women
sometimes, Venus takes women
sometimes, Venus fills their tiny bodies
and walks among us for everyone to see
