Final Project
I like to think of writing as a way of telling our personal mythologies. A way of filtering the world through our own perspective, and letting people look in. Maybe it’s because I’m a control freak, or maybe it’s simply ego, but one of my favorite ways of writing is to twist an old story the way I think it should go, shaped by my experiences.
The first of these poems, Athena’s Rebirth, I actually wrote a few years ago. Growing up, the story of her birth was one of my favorites. It didn’t matter to me that her father lacked morals, or that her mother was dead; I just thought it was cool that she was the goddess of wisdom, and she came out of her dad’s skull. Back then, I never thought about consequences or repercussions.
When Sean killed himself my freshman year of high school, I refused to think about it. He wasn’t in class, and all day I’d heard millions of rumors. When it was finally announced over the PA, static-y and final, I went numb. All they told us was that he was in a coma. I started second guessing my memories of him, mind racing over every interaction I could remember. The next day my friend Matt called me to tell me he’d been taken off life support, and I did my best to wipe the memory of Sean from my head. But there were times he’d creep back in. When the fires were raging in California, I couldn’t help thinking ‘Sean always wanted to be a fire fighter. He could’ve been there, helping.’ Sometimes it was just the gruesome image, a loud bang and then a spray of blood, bone and brain. It was one of those times when the memory of Athena’s birth flashed in my head, and I became irrationally furious. I resented that there was a story about someone having their head cracked open and living, even if it was a fictional character. So I wrote the poem, a blending of reality and legend to remind myself that myths were created to help people make sense of the world, not as a reflection of it.
The poem Apples to Apples was written using a combination of lines I’d scribbled down at different times. When I was watching a show about the Garden of Eden on the history channel, they explained how they’d used clues in the Bible to track where the garden would’ve been located. I laughed hysterically when they said it was located in what is now Iraq. I wrote down some lines about it, and left it for awhile. When I finally came back to it, I decided I wanted to add in other things I found ironic - like the fact that something is actually labeled ‘Adam’s Apple’ when it’s usually Eve that gets the blame for eating it. The dichotomy of womanhood that seems to exist, even in Greek goddesses, with Kore (a.k.a. Persephone) as both the goddess of fertility and death. And Pandora’s blame for the worlds evil, when she was created by Zeus and Hephaestus specifically as a punishment for Prometheus’ theft of fire from the gods. And last, going back to the idea of the apple from the Garden of Eden, my amusement that my friend John eats apples whole - stem and seeds included.
The victimization of Persephone throughout history, and even in modern references, drives me crazy. She’s supposed to go from a young, innocent, goddess, to Hades’ prisoner for six months of the year. Captured, tricked into eating the pomegranate seeds, and only defended by her mother, she’s the epitome of what a victimized woman is supposed to be. So I wrote both The Iron Queen and Hades, and wanting. as my take on the myth, with Persephone able to make the choice for herself, right or wrong, about what she wants for her future. My Persephone isn’t naive, but makes her own decisions, even if they aren’t understood by the people around her, and I like her a lot better than the victimized Persephone. It was fun to imagine her opinion and viewpoint, when most people tend to focus on the story from her mom's view.
Zeus and Hera’s relation has always been a bone of contention for me. There’s Zeus, the philandering husband, and Hera, the accepting but bitter wife. While there’s an occasional myth about Hera being angry at her husband, she mostly takes her anger out on the women he sleeps with. And, as for the gods having human traits, this seems to be a pretty excellent example. The lack of rationality behind this irks me. Similarly, you can’t get mad when someone ‘cheats’ if you aren’t even in a relationship. I was labeled heartless for my lack of sympathy for my friend when her ‘friend-with-benefits’ flaunted his sexcapades in front of her. Apparently repeating ‘you aren’t dating him, he didn’t cheat’ doesn’t snap someone into reality. I ended up hearing over and over (and over) about how it was the fact that it was a stripper that made it so bad. But even if it hadn’t been a stripper, I knew that she’d find some other way of dismissing the girl instead of the boy. This led to the poem, Hera was more human than Goddess, which reflects on this need to find blame with the other woman involved instead of simply leaving a bad situation.
The last poem of the collection, Moirae, deals with the compulsion people feel to know their future. From palm readings and horoscopes to tarot cards and stupid online quizzes, everyone wants to find some way to figure out what’s going to happen next. Moirae is about my personal love of Tarot Cards. Even though I don’t believe in them, I still maintain a certain sense of awe and trepidation when I have them in my hand, shuffling them. The basic spread lays out past, present and future, and reminds me of the Greek goddesses of fate, the Moirae. I like the idea of intertwining stories, and pictorial depictions, those of the tapestry of fate or the pictures on the tarot cards, as a map of the future. And, while I'd rather not truly believe in it, I like the idea of an inescapable fate.
Athena’s Rebirth
I missed the foreshadowing
the way his smile would flicker, wave, crack
like lightning hitting an antenna
how when he spoke, the words throbbed.
when he asked me to run away with him
I said no
because I was young and stupid,
didn't notice the way that even the classroom
would shake, pound like his temples.
the headache grew -
a week later he took Hephaestus’s hammer to relieve the pressure;
cracked his skull open with a shotgun.
he wasn’t Zeus,
wasn't immortal.
still, I was born again in grey matter
left with only guilty knowledge.
apples to apples
The alliteration of 'forbidden fruit' wasn’t enough
it was Adam’s Apple, too
but the Garden of Eden was found
in ancient Mesopotamia; modern day Iraq
now we know there wasn’t an apple, it was
a pomegranate, a fig, some other fruit
that Eve and Adam choked on.
So I mix my mythology -
Eve, Kore, Pandora -
my trinity, lips tinged carmine
based on curiosity and,
god forbidden,
knowledge.
And I smile
when John eats his apple whole
despite my reminder
about arsenic in the seeds.
The Iron Queen and Hades
the ground may have split
exposing his sooty features
eyes of raw coal
sharp slate cheekbones
lips flavored ash
this was no abduction
I recognized costume jewelry
catching my attention, sparking in fluorescent lights
yet I was hungry to see him stripped
expected him to glimmer even then
he put on his invisibility helmet
while I ate all the pomegranate seeds
wanting.
It’s wicked, I’m told,
to think Persephone wished to be
taken from her mother, apprehended by a god.
(I don’t – I won’t – call it rape.)
Immoral to think she was flattered
a handsome deity with emerald eyes
garnet lips, skin veined like opal
would want, would lust, enough to capture her
riding in on a dusky horse.
My mother’s eyes, too, become dusky
as I settle in at his back on the motorcycle
but it’s already winter
and I’m not scared of her cold
the fires of Hades’ Elysium are waiting
Hera was more human than Goddess
her eye-shadow
peacock blue, purple, green
eyelashes feathered
she smells of yeast, of hearth smoke, of home.
mothers him
stealing his drinks, forcing him to eat bread
to absorb
the Southern Comfort.
Cronus vomited her up
after eating ambrosia made
of alcohol and drugs.
she imitates him
vomiting food, as the boys
talk of strippers
and sex.
her mind changes the girls
into weasels, bears, white calves
trying to become a goddess through
divine forgiveness
he never asked for.
Moirae
the cards snap
like Cerberus’ jaw snatching
a bite
of meat, of bone, of marrow.
some stick, proving you can’t
shuffle fate & the fool is
bleeding pomegranate juice from his eyes
as he hangs
from his foot, smiling.
Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos lay before me;
the thread, the loom, the shears.
I ignore the cards, content.
my hands don't tremor
when arranging fate.
I look down at the fool, smiling.
