Venus in the Bathroom Mirror

11 June 2025

Love flattens hierarchies,between legend and routine,between gods and grocers¹.

Your beloved brushing her teethbecomes as worthy of epics as any war.

Not because they are elevated to Venus,but because Venus is revealed²to have always lived in the bathroom mirror³.

Notes

By the editor.

Aristotle tells how visitors hesitated at the door when they found Heraclitus warming himself at the oven, and he told them to come in, for there are gods here too (Parts of Animals 645a, in Lennox's translation). The story is the poem's claim in a kitchen: the gods are in the ordinary all along. source ↩
In What the Ghosts Actually Are Venus is the Ghost she calls Sex, the Highghost that best embodies love, though still only one aspect of it. The poem lets the Ghost of love show up where love shows up, in a toothbrush and a mirror. ↩
Venus with a mirror is one of the great pictures of the goddess. In Velázquez's Rokeby Venus (about 1647–51) she lies with her back to us and looks at herself in a mirror held by Cupid. Her mirror is in the bathroom here, with a toothbrush. source ↩