Tag Archives: greek mythology

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.

Clytemnestra by Louise Crossley

26 Saturday Mar 2016

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Clytemnestra

Doe-eyed for shining Achilles,
my innocent went gladly to Aulis.
Willing even when she knew
the price for a fair wind
was murder disguised as a wedding.
So the singers of tales might name Mycenae
“the place that launched a thousand ships”,
and her father the captain at its helm,
his lies masked with responsibility
to Argos and the gathered fleet,
she stretched her neck.

The Fates have twisted women into tokens
to be taken in war or lust, given in marriage
or politicking. But she who makes a king
can break a king: bring him down
to splintered bone, pooling blood,
sightless eyes as well as any battle foe.
And this man, with his obsession
to be an heroic warrior as he raged
against his fellows, thought nothing
of the rage of women consigned
to the edges of life; to the beginnings
and ends, to wash and bind,
to render fit for life and afterlife …

I have rendered him fit for neither.

Louise Crossley is Admin for both Poetry Swindon Festival and The Interpreter’s House magazine poetry competition. She has been published on Amaryllis, The Stare’s Nest, and Peony Moon poetry blogs and in The Interpreter’s House and Prole magazines. She is a complete nerd about all things related to the Trojan War. She lives in the Cotswolds with a cat, two chickens and a bit of an attitude.

Penelopiad by Louise Crossley

02 Wednesday Mar 2016

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Penelopiad

Meshed with goat-bruised thyme,
familiar names of unknown women
are freighted on a salt-tanged breeze,
and the tumble of surf-washed pebbles
echoes the ‘clink’ of restless weights
weft-tied at the loom.

Ever, draught-borne, in my ear,
those faceless others pulse
as the surf-sucked shores
of your distant idylls.

One who weaves ephemera:
visceral illusions.
One whose siren threads tie
in suffocating domesticity.
One who is not yet bound;
who is too young to weave.

All pattern to the ever-moving weft of you
as I shuttle threads in familiar measure:
dutifully fashion a parent’s shroud.

And when, wracked and salt-weary,
you pass once more over this threshold
I will hip-shut the door on what has gone
and be thankful for the time
when I am less loom;
you less seas.

Louise Crossley is admin for both Poetry Swindon Festival and The Interpreter’s House magazine poetry competition. She has been published on Amaryllis, The Stare’s Nest, and Peony Moon poetry blogs and in The Interpreter’s House and Prole magazines. She is a complete nerd about all things related to the Trojan War. She lives in the Cotswolds with a cat, two chickens and a bit of an attitude.

Ariadne in Married Life by Stephen Bone

21 Sunday Feb 2016

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Ariadne in Married Life

The spiral, serpentine,
the classic unicursal. Since Crete
he’s grown a passion for such things.

Each evening finds him silent
at his board, an endless perfecting
of blind alleys, falsely hopeful paths,
his dog Daedalus – in the name of Zeus! -
curled by his feet.

While in my corner – all lovesickness
cured – I embroider with my flashing needle
the dear bull beast as I remember him. Snap
silk thread between my teeth.

Stephen Bone has been published in various journals in the UK and US. His first collection In the Cinema was published by Playdead Press in 2014.

Persephone by Jane Frank

10 Wednesday Feb 2016

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Persephone

Half a life is better than none,
though sometimes when I wander
through the fields of Asphodel
I imagine what having it all
would be like.
Love and light?
When I returned
to this sunless world,
felt leaves crunch
under my feet,
I was almost glad.
The Fates weave as they will.
Four pomegranate seeds
and any chance of eternal spring
gone long ago
along with hope.
So forget me as I was
when we danced
in fields of flowers.
I am a dark Queen now.
I produce and destroy.
I curse the souls of the dead.
It is good enough.

Jane Frank’s work has recently been published in Australian Poetry Journal and the Bimblebox Art Project in Australia, as well as Skylark Review and Southlight magazine in the UK. Jane teaches a range of writing disciplines at Griffith University in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. She has just completed a PhD examining the rise of the global Book Town Movement.

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.