Thomas Rodes
is a semi-retired and fully burnt-out information management consultant who spends the cold months in the Washington, D.C. suburbs and summers and falls at his farm in rural Maine. In addition to Umbrella, recent works have appeared in The Panhandler, the American Organist and The Shit Creek Review.
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The Other David
Not the meaty marble mesomorphic
David left by Buonarroti’s chisel.
Bronze, androgenous and Mapplethorpic,
callow youth in curls with arms of swizzle
sticks bent fourfold, forming flaccid fruity
brackets ’round his teeny weenie, savory
budding breasts, smooth thighs and girlish booty.
Donatello’s monument to bravery.
Artist’s Statement
 I
drafted this ekphrasis on a train from Florence to Venice at a time when my confidence as a writer had sunken to an all-time low and I had all but decided to quit writing poetry. If any theme is time-worn and canonical, it is probably “artistic courage” but, yet, I suppose we all have our own epiphanies.
Generally recognized as the first self-supported standing bronze figure cast since antiquity, Donatello’s “David” (ca. 1433) was not only a departure from then-current standards for form and technique, but the interpretation of the biblical subject as a swishy nude male proved scandalous.
Stripping off the layers of sexual politics and alternative definitions of courage, the moral for a writer is, of course, quite simple: hear your critics, but do not allow them to suppress your own interpretations or your freedom to experiment with form. It is a maxim that is easy to intellectualize but not so painless to follow.
Writing this poem has helped me follow it.
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