MAPPING THE CITY: DC Places, Part II Mary-Sherman Willis   MIRACLE after Leo Friedlander's sculptures on Arlington Memorial Bridge, "The Arts of War," "Sacrifice," and "Valor" (1951) The breasts of a goddess are coned, capped, coppered, her pects like fuselages, Vesuviuses stoppered— or Grand Tetons, their river rocks washed with a thousand babbles, a wash of tears. There’s no mistaking her for a god. And we’ve seen that goddess: her stony breasts flashed to passing traffic, balance-scales or spears in hand. We’ve stood before her, awed and disconnected, or rather we’ve burned to connect to what’s contained, cupped, bucketed: the breasts a thousand mouths have suckled at and sucked to stone. Milk … from a stone: that is the miracle of a thousand loaves turned into a goddess’s self, pervasive and alone.   Mary-Sheman Willis's poems and reviews have appeared in the New Republic, the Hudson Review, the Iowa Review, and Shenandoah; in Ted Kooser's column "American Life in Poetry"; and in several anthologies. She is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and teaches creative writing at George Washington University. She is a fourth-generation Washingtonian.   Published in Volume 11, Number 4, Fall 2010.