Cary Barney

The Rape of Europa

 

I.

 

Titian drapes his model over the divan,

on her back, arm overhead, breast exposed,

and sketches her onto the blank of the canvas

the producer later seizes on for inspiration.

 

The actress lies against the green screen

half-naked, screaming at emptiness

later to be filled by digital waves and bull.

 

The director wants to cut, they’ve got enough,

but the producer motions no, and watches, watches

as it all goes on too long.

 

Later, once they’ve added Titian’s colors

enhanced with a splash of Rubens for the flesh

and motion-captured Zeus (who’s right for Zeus?)

she’ll watch the rushes with him in his soundproof bedroom.

 

The Viagra will work its metamorphosis.

 

II.

 

She came to me, all cow-eyed, wove me a garland of flowers, draped it

over horns longer and sharper than the ones the Italian gave me in the picture.

 

He gave me this rascal look, like I can’t wait to bang her. Accurate enough.

She’d caught my Olympian eye: muscular farm girl thighs, warm full belly.

Small breasts, but what she had she flaunted, in that loose white tunic.

What the hell was she doing, dancing with her father’s bulls dressed like that,

          if she wasn’t asking for it?

 

When I want to fuck a girl, I just transform, with Leda into a swan,

with Alcmena into her own husband. (Don’t tell me that time wasn’t consensual.)

Europa wouldn’t resist me. A beautiful white beast I was, and well-equipped.

Ever seen the schlong on a bull? Because I’m Zeus, bingo, there it hung.

What woman wouldn’t want to grab it?

 

She climbed on to give me a backrub. There was the sea.

Relax, I said, plunging in, I’ll keep you above the waves.

Just grab my horn. I’ll give you a ride you won’t forget.

I’ll make you queen of Crete. We’ll have kids, or calves (well, she would).

 

Did she cry for help? What do the Cupids in the picture tell you?

Arrows of love. A girl likes danger sometimes.

 

I picked the loveliest beach to come ashore,

timed it for full moonlight to put her in the mood.

What form did I take? A bull would have torn her apart. I’m not that cruel.

 

So I left her crying on the beach. Look at her, those parted thighs. She wanted it.

 

III.

 

They told my father, “young girls project nascent desires they don’t fully understand onto horses or, in her case, bulls. Perfectly normal.”

 

If he bought that bullshit, fine.

I could go to the herd when I liked,

let them out to stony ground

to run and build muscle for beef.

They earthquaked past,

shook me out of body, out of world.

I chose one and caught his stride,

close as I could, hand on flank,

feeling muscle bunch and stretch,

heat pass into me. Then another,

coarse black coat bristling

under my fingers. I turned,

dodged horns, chose another,

stampeded with the bulls

until I fell, spent, into flowers

and lay there, gasping

as bull-shaped clouds passed slowly in the sky.

 

If this was about sex

too bad sex would never match this ecstasy

hidden from all but myself

and as it happened Zeus, that bastard.

 

In the seaside pasture

jaws pulled and chomped at rippling grass

and a white bull was suddenly there,

small horns, face kind as a cow’s,

eyes divine. They pulled me forward

until hot huffs from his nostrils

damped my tunic. He nuzzled me

and strings of drool ran down my legs.

 

Within the brutal beauty of the herd

he seemed the gentle heart.

I crowned him with flowers.

 

He nodded toward his back, inviting me

to mount. My dream, he knew,

a union I sought of girl and beast.

Just like Zeus to take it literally.

 

He ferried me to the island,

trampled and gored me,

changed into a man and acted like one,

rolled away, his mind elsewhere,

soon followed by the rest of him.

On Cretan sands I bled and wept.

 

IV.

 

Zeus released the following statement: “That was not me, I was not myself.”

His movie tanks, his temples crumble. Hera lawyers up and divorces him.

Tourists wander as if through some exhumed movie set, pre-CGI,

where monacled directors barked over megaphones at hordes of extras

now dust like the Greeks and Romans they played in standard issue togas.

 

Zeus glowers unseen, though gazed upon,

exiled to tiles and vases, transformed and shrunken

to a silent motif on the canvas, down for the count,

pointed at, discussed by art historians,

ignored by those who only see a bull.

He’s lost his thunderous titles, his rule, his rape, his potency.

 

Europa lends her name to continents and moons

but earns no residuals. She’s never cared

for the young Venetian courtesan painted in her place,

supplanting her, too pallid and too plump.

But the painter caught the fear, that much she’ll give him,

her mouth forever open in that scream.

 

They shuffle past her to the next painting

for the guide to explain and sterilize.

And once they’re gone the white bull rolls his eye again

toward the mound of warm womanflesh on her back and his

and swims on.

 

 

Cary Barney was born on Long Island, raised in Massachusetts, received a BA from Marlboro College and an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. He has lived in Spain since 1991 and teaches theater and writing at Saint Louis University’s Madrid campus.