Her Words — Poems by Vendredi 'Venus' Godfrey

These two poems came to me on the eve of her funeral, sent by one of her teachers at Sol C. Johnson High School in Savannah. Until that night, I had not seen them.

Her mother had told me she knew nothing about my daughter's writing. Yet my daughter had been writing publicly — submitting work to a cross-school literary anthology, semester after semester, choosing the name she wanted printed beside her own, and putting her voice into the world.

I want her work on this site because it is her. She wrote it. She chose to publish it. She picked the name she wanted on it. That part of her does not need to be filtered through anyone else.

“Hello! My name is Venus. I hope you enjoy my poems.” — Her own contributor note

LONGING

Not sure what to do, I run, chasing you, nipping at your heels. I chase what I can’t catch, knowing you’ll be just out of reach at best. I follow as though you’re something that I want to have. I’ll run my feet out from under me, but please never slow down. I don’t need to get close to you.

PRAGMA

The thing we have is like fabric, comforting and easy to mend, seemingly never irreparable, stains gone with a determined scrub. We flex and stretch, bend and tailor, and iron out. I’ve heard of those unfortunate ones, fragile glasses and unchanging marbles, care-intensive leathers and unyielding woods, and while nothing’s wrong with a different set of rules or different care requirements, there’s something to be said for something easy.

Vendredi ‘Venus’ Godfrey

Published in Young Author Project, Volume 16, Issue 1
Sol C. Johnson High School · Savannah, Georgia · Fall 2024

Brought to her family by Meghan Quinlan, PhD, who supervised the Deep Young Author Project in which my daughter participated multiple semesters. A copy of the volume was sent to her family by Kalima Harris, Director of the Young Author Project.

Order the volume on Amazon →

Every copy supports the Young Author Project and the young writers in it.

Before you scroll any further — sit with them.

Go back and read her poems again. Slowly. Let the titles simmer.
What do you feel?
What do you sense?
What do you hear in her voice?

If you would rather stop here and let her work speak for itself, please do. Close the page. Sit with Longing and Pragma one more time. You do not need anything else from me. Click here to return home.

If you want to know what I see — a father who first met these poems on the eve of her funeral, after asking her mother just last week and being told she knew nothing about my daughter’s writing — keep reading.

What I See

A Father, Meeting Her Words for the First Time

I am writing this as someone who has just met her words. Take it for what it is — one father’s reading, not a final one. She gets the final one.

PRAGMA Pragma is one of the Greek words for love. The mature one. The working one. The one that endures. She had a whole lexicon to choose from — eros, the romantic one, ludus, the playful one, and several others — and she chose pragma. A teenager who picks pragma to write about is a teenager who has been watching closely. She knew the difference between something hard and something easy. She wanted something easy.
LONGING Longing is a poem about choosing distance as a form of survival. “I don’t need to get close to you” is not the line of a girl who did not know what she was saying. It is the line of a girl who had decided. The whole poem is the speaker chasing — but never expecting to catch, and not even wanting to catch. That is a deliberate choice. That is a survival posture.
NOT NAIVE · OBSERVED These are not naive poems. These are not first-attempts. These are observed poems — written by someone who had been watching her own life and knew what she was watching.

And they are the words she was living every day.