A Magazine of Many Arts

FATHER’S CHILD
Athena’s Choice

From within—fearless Metis opened her thighs
in blood she birthed me
then fed me milk and words
Metis told me he had swallowed us
hoping to keep our wisdom
she was content to wait and plan
knew I would do as I choose

And so I chose
he could not swallow destiny
and I battled with words
speared his every thought
knowing full well my power
in my father

He conceived an idea, words, a gender
tried to swallow the counsel of women
tried to digest me before I opposed
I did not spring from his head
More my anger boiled too long
that brought my release

I countered until I won my way
out he called for Hephaestus
bright ingenious Hephaestus
who swung his mighty axe
split the head of Zeus in two

Out of that duality
I strode forth

My hero feels the putrid wind
on battle-torn fields
treads safely
between severed limbs and moist-slick blades
and the bodies of the fallen

My hero bathes in roses afterwards
and can less be held by any one woman
than the earth can hold the West Wind to her bosom

Royals feed from the sweet-sour embroidery
that garbs my hero’s tongue
they put the prizes he won
in the shadow of their own thrones
and they think that their lineage
can make his sword sleep
like a child in a cradle

My hero taught me
to read the flight of arrows
and how to kill my enemies
before they ever see my sword

My hero told me to hide my breasts beneath armor
and cut my long hair short
and make my voice sound darker than it is

He told me to forget the man my father was
before the armies came
and brought their wars
and took our lives away

Silver sheen on lampblack feathers
Turn one eye, then two,
Hiding self-sown secrets.

The handle slips from reluctant fingers
I step out, expecting
a twitch,
a crouch.
A hunting-stoop in crisp hoarfrost air.

Bright-eyed stillness.  Poised.  Mocking.

I turn my back,
My collar up against the cold croaking gossip
My feet fumbling to get ahead of themselves

All the while I can feel their attention rapt
as a gaoler’s grip in the crux of an arm;
Hard as sleet
and pinching the bone.

As one, they tear from the trees
and begin to circle.

Barry King lived in several countries around the world until settling in his spouse’s home town of Kingston, Ontario and converting to Canadianism.  He writes fiction and poetry, and moonlights as Web director for ChiZine Publications.

 

“It’s Midsummer night,”
I whisper to you, already asleep;
“if we make love, I’ll conceive
a divine child.

“She will babble a bard’s wisdom,
he will lullaby the darkness down.
Enter me, and enter summer’s kingdom,
let me thaw your winter heart.”

You protest by shielding
your eyes with your hands.
You don’t waken,
won’t turn to my sun.

I am no fire of bones
startling the wheat to life,
inspiring the poppies’ bloom,
no blazing brand that ignites the green.

But as I undress, a moth encircles me,
travels the briars of my hair,
batters itself against my skin
as if I were a flame.

I was born an orphan
a wild and savage tiny thing
and you caught me looking up
hunger making my eyes wide

You took pity on me, Ursa Major,
Big Bear,
nursed me with the warm
cream of your stars, wrapped
your shining paws around me
and licked me clean
with your comet tail tongue

Mother Bear
you have given me the skies
and the night stars
glimmering like fireflies
and I am grown now, feel
the planet beneath me
but earth and rock
are not the hunting grounds you showed me,
are not the wilderness
you bequeathed on me

Mother Bear
I am your wild child
my lips already parted
for the chase
of comets, planets’ rings,
clouds of dust
and maybe somewhere in the black
I’ll find something living wild and savage
as did I

Beauty Remembers

I.

Kindling to anger
like August wood,
your mountain-storm voice
drained and drowned me –

Yes. I’ll admit
I was afraid, at first,
when they brought me
to your house.

II.

Your love of the roses
puzzled me. They never suffered
from your whims, unlike the servants.
I watched you tend them
with gentle claws.
I imagined that touch
on my flesh,

and shivered.

III.

Books I had aplenty,
more than merchant’s daughters
would see in a lifetime.
I ate them up, hungry
for past knowledge and poems.
My fingers grew rough
from the jagged page-edges.

Once I cut myself deep
on The Anatomy of Melancholy
when you prowled the library.
Sucking my finger
till my mouth was iron,
I saw you watch, eyes afire.

And I knew: you, too, were hungry.

THE CAT AND THE TOAD

At the dawn of the world on a tree-sheltered road
an agreeable cat met a horrible toad.
When the cat saw its neighbor it fearfully shook
for in those days all creatures would act as they looked
and the toad was all warty, and bulging, and slimy.
The trembling cat mewed a terrified “Blimey!”
(more vigorous oaths had not yet been discovered)
and looked at the evil made plain on the other
one hideous sin for each hideous feature.
“Oh please do not kill me, most wicked of creatures!”
it begged without hope. But the toad thought awhile
then it gave what might almost have been called a smile
and it said “You may keep what you carry within
but if you are to live, you must give me your skin.”
Now the cat had no choice, though it bitterly cried
but to take off its fur and to put on the hide
of the venomous toad, and no creatures had made
such a villainous threat, such a terrible trade.
Then the cat hopped away where it once would have strode
for the toad was a cat, and the cat was a toad.

This explains why the toad, though so utterly charmless
is gentle in nature and totally harmless
while cats appear graceful and splendid and good
but would murder us all in our beds if they could.

The world on the backs of elephants 

standing room only on the Great Turtle, Akapara
praying she does not dive again
into eternity

but not the Brahmin
riding on the roof of the train car
smoking a cigarette and looking down
on the Ganges, the world-source
choked with sludge
and affluence.

We take the subcontinent and divide it still further
into plots of earth, looking for sustenance
the oil seeping from its wounds and our own
the Gupta regime with its gold trim upon the pyre
a suffragette, a Sati widow
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
burning as the L40 boosters explode
from the Satish Dhawan Space Center, on Sriharikota Island
taking with it our mended limbs.  Our many-armed nation
bursting at the seams as it reaches upward
striving for equality in the cosmos
made hostile only
by the approach
from the west.

Temporal Velocity Theory
(Applied in Relative Poetical Mathematics)

All of accumulated time (including all of anticipated time),
expressed as an infinite line of points progressing through itself at
the speed of light,
is equal to a single point along the same line progressing at
the speed of thought.
THEREFORE
The speed of thought is equal to the entire distance time spans at
the speed of light.
OR
All of time, traversed at the speed of light, is equal to
the shortest span between two adjacent points of time traversed
at the speed of thought.
ULTIMATELY
At the speed of thought, the speed of light through time
appears to STOP.