Dog Days of August

Regina La Barra
May 2016

Pussy Riot Virgins

Dog days, bitches in heat, and we are advised to stay indoors.

So shaded by the cornice, Julian’s chilling at the window.  Sanctuary!  Sanctuary!  No Lon Chaney he, trawling for two chicks under the spotlight of the midnight sun, leaking docs like menstrual blood under sunshine laws.

Nadia, Masha, and Katya, sweaty midriffs bared, are punk-rocking the Kremlin at the altar of Christ the Redeemer Khram Khrista Spasitelya (the Son’s joint not the Mother’s) telling Her beads, telling Her to get on the stick (an infelicitous translation, as the only stick She ever got on was God). Hurry!  Hurry ‘cause Nadezhda and Maria have to rush home before Putin seizes their kids.

At long last, the Eleousa, Vladimir’s hostage palladium, She of tenderness, takes pity on her acolytes, flares her exiled Greek nostrils and commands:  Venite pure in Italia, come to sunny Italy sempre soleggiata where anarchy was invented, where Nietzsche kissed a flogged horse on the muzzle, where Giordano Bruno burned, where no dusty dark sisters to that polished pink Virgin ever needed exhortation to become feminists.  Where under the great walnut, the Black Madonnas washed their armpits and rolled back their sleeves to keep them clean while they sawed off tyrants’ heads.

Get back inside.  It’s getting hot