Tag Archives: gods

Hephaestus by David W. Landrum

27 Friday May 2016

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Hephaestus

Forget the forms the poets
have hammered me into,
the shape their molten words
have cast for me,
the soot hexameters,
the pyrrhic twists,
and lies, limp spondees forged,
making me halt,
twisted, setting my lame identity.
The list is long
of goddesses who loved me,
my limbs, my stance,
my body, which the poets
say is disjuncture.
Aglaea, youngest of the Charites,
lay down in my embrace.
Good Repute, Acclaim, Prosperity
were our three children
(Eucleia, Eupheme, Euthenia)—
hardly the offspring of a misshaped troll!
The slender-thighed Cabeiro,
sweet nymph, and ravishing,
chose my love; and Aetna,
the swarthy huntress of strong arms
with black hair covering her shins
and beauty wild and raging as the sea
has loved me ages on.
I am misnamed “game legs”
and “hobbling god.”
The slight limp that I have
from when Zeus threw me out of heaven
(I was readmitted soon)
is much exaggerated.
Yes, I made the net—but more
to rid myself of witless Aphrodite
than to express chagrin.
Ares can have her as far as I’m concerned.
My works are fair,
my limitations none.

David W. Landrum‘s poetry and fiction have appeared in journals in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Europe. His novellas, Strange Brew, ShadowCity, The Last Minstrel, and Le Cafe de la Mort, are available through Amazon.

zeus by Anne Mild

24 Wednesday Feb 2016

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zeus

you rolled into my life like
late-summer thunder
tossing my hair
and breaking my limbs

shocking me with the suddenness
of your smile

i wanted only to cut a lemon,
squeeze its sourness on
the ragged-cut edges of the leaves
to keep the world from turning brown.

but tomorrow kept stealing moments from us
and you were gone
just as sudden as you came

leaving only the rising scent
of blacktop after a heavy rain
and me,

wishing you would have been here
for my spring.

Anne Mild is a twenty-something student with too many notebooks and not enough quiet. She likes alpacas, her pug, and space. In her spare time she works towards earning a graduate degree in History and making the perfect soup.

Leda and the Swan by Meggie Royer

22 Friday Jan 2016

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Leda and the Swan

He came to me as the moon does, without warning
through fields of waning light. He was the swan
and I was his dove, water giving way beneath us
like wine.
He was a good lover, I’ll give him that.
Gentle despite his beak.
But I could only think of the wounded birds
I kept in jars as a child, how their feathers beat mercilessly
against the glass.
He was just another thing I had captured.
And when Helen went for his throat, I let her.
It snapped like all his promises.

Meggie Royer is a writer and photographer from the Midwest who is currently majoring in Psychology at Macalester College. Her poems have previously appeared in Words Dance Magazine, The Harpoon Review, Melancholy Hyperbole, and more. She has won national medals for her poetry and a writing portfolio in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and was the Macalester Honorable Mention recipient of the 2015 Academy of American Poets Student Poetry Prize.

Bucchero by Helen May Williams

10 Saturday Oct 2015

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Bucchero

His mother at her potter’s wheel . . .
charcoal mixed with clay . . .
moulds the figure of a Kore
moulds the figure of a Kern;
applies each to the still-wet krater . . .
waits and watches it bake.

. . . Baked.

His mouth devours sweet flesh . . .
the one-handled vessel . . .
always refilled . . .
poppy-heads infused with blood . . .
black hellebore . . . digitalis . . .
deadly nightshade . . . a dull red light . . .

Her mother at the clay oven . . .
. . . charcoal for intense heat . . .
shapes cakes from the last goat’s milk,
honey and barley flour;
moulds two knob-figures on each . . .
waits and watches them bake.

. . . Baked.

She shakes the winnowing basket . . .
discards the chaff, gathers the fresh grain . . .
fresh-ground barley meal
moistened with honey
mixed with green chickpeas . . .
. . . on the fire . . . remembers the dead.

Her mother ‒ or is it his? ‒
holds out the winnowing basket,
filled with warm cakes,
white poppy-seeds, sage,
emmer-wheat, barley,
unwashed sheep’s wool.

. . . Baked.

Her mouth . . . his mouth . . .
cakes hold the fire’s intense heat . . .
layers of honey, goat’s milk cheese,
coarse pastry, cake . . . melt.
Wine . . . a fig and walnuts.
. . . the winnowing basket cradles a new-born child.

He sees: still-burning, half-baked fragments . . .
he stumbles . . . seeks the dull-red light . . .

 

*Bucchero ware—the national pottery of Etruria, of a uniform black, neither glazed nor painted, but decorated with figures moulded separately and applied to the pottery. Essentially a two-handled basket, the liknon could be used to carry anything, hence its secondary function as a cradle.

Helen May Williams is Associate Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, The University of Warwick. She is completing an edition of memoirs by her late mother, who worked at Bletchley Park and for E.C.I.T.O. Her poetry has been published in a number of small press publications since the late 1970s, including Hearing Voices, Horizon and Raw Edge, I Am Not a Silent Poet and the collection, Bluebeard’s Wives, Heaventree Press 2007.

The Green Man by Allen Ashley

30 Saturday May 2015

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The Green Man

You’ve seen him on pub signs, of course:
a country-dwelling, jovial chap.
Today he’s been rendered safe:
follow him across the road.
He’s the smiling bearded face on church walls
but we’ve known him longer than we’ve known
           the Church
           or Christianity
or other mystery cults from the Middle East.
He’s there in jack o’ lanterns, jack of shadows,
Pan and Robin of Locksley;
every heroic British man-jack;

Follow him across the river and into the trees;
don’t look back.

We draw him in clothing – ragged trousers.
hand-sewn jerkin – but really we
know he would most likely frolic
unclothed
with nymphs, dryads and Wiccan priestesses
coyly described as “sky clad”.

See him grinning at our mortal concerns.
He is laughing at those who equate him
with the Horned One, The Beast, Old Nick.
Too many in these days think in black and white
and he is green. Fertile, virile, abundant…
Forgotten
almost
but due for rebirth.

Allen Ashley’s latest book (as editor) is “Sensorama: Stories of the Senses” (Eibonvale Press, 2015). He recently guest-edited the online magazine “Sein und Werden”. He is the judge for the British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition. He is also the co-author of “Dreaming Spheres: Poems of the Solar System” with Sarah Doyle (PS Publishing, 2014).

Pythoness by Jennifer A. McGowan

26 Sunday Apr 2015

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Pythoness

You never really get used to the taste
of laurel leaves, you know?
That hard green bitterness
which leads to ecstasy, divinity,
and a steady income.

The first time I sat on the tripod
suspended over the chthonic rift,
I said You must be joking.
Never so uncomfortable, and the cloying smell!
Now, said the elder,
you see why we rotate.

Years later, hair unbound
and eyes streaming—my first time in public.
In front of me, two bodies all scraped knees
and clasped hands, asking
How can we conceive? We all fall still,
listening for words.
I chew another wad. Eyes stare and hope.

And then I get it. You don’t
put your ear to the ground for a sun god.
We’re here to listen
for the roots Daphne sprouted
when she escaped, burrowing down to Persephone,
who understood. Their knowledge
cracks the earth, becoming steam
no male sky can carry.

This is our secret.

Another secret is that compassion can mingle with truth.
I look at the twining hands.
Words come.

 

First published in Acumen.

Jennifer A. McGowan obtained her PhD from the University of Wales. Despite being certified as disabled at age 16, she has published poetry and prose in many magazines and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Rialto and The Connecticut Review. Her chapbooks are available from Finishing Line Press, and her first collection is forthcoming from Indigo Dreams Publishing. Her website can be found at http://www.jenniferamcgowan.com.