The Arms Of Venus Poem by Jack Galmitz

Venus, of the House of Xtravaganza,
was a young boy who was a young girl
who walked the catwalks of the Ballroom
Culture of Harlem. She was sure sinuous,
blonde, light- skinned, thin as any model was
and as she said, there was nothing masculine
about her. She wanted what all girls want:
a home of her own, a family, a man who loved her,
children. She figured in the documentary
Paris Is Burning. It was the highlight of her life
before a camera. She was a natural for it.
She was 23 when they found her.
It was a Christmas morning. The police
were called about suspicious circumstances.
Venus's body had been shoved under a bed
in a seedy hotel room in Manhattan.
She had been strangled.
Her birth mother and her adopted House Mother
are still looking for the killer. No one knows
who did it. It could be said that another culture,
antagonistic to the Ballroom Culture, was responsible.
There exists, after all, an Executive Order that denies
her existence, that scrubs her from the Book of the Living.
Poor dear, she was enchanting in all those scenes
where she lay in bed even in plastic curlers.