UnMythed (selections)

Clytie

I can see you sitting there

looking up to your love

watching his every move

through the sky

like the girl who waited

every day at the corner

so to follow him to school

I knew his timetable

where he sat for lunch

and which afterschools he had practice

gradually your life changes

from human to plant

till you are finally immobilized

by your adulation

and unrequited love

if only you’d known

he wasn’t a god at all

but just some bunch of hot air

•

Clytie was a young woman in love with the Sun god. She would sit outside all day and watch him. Eventually she turned into a sunflower.

***

Amphion

perhaps you’re right about my beard—

it’s funny, I guess facial hair

well, hair of almost any kind

is a measure of masculinity

and academics and artists

have always felt a little like eunuchs

(real men use their bodies)

it’s an interesting insight

(and surprising from you)

but it falls a little short—

what I wonder is this:

do I have a beard

to look more like a man

or less like a woman?

•

Amphion was scorned by his brother, Zethus (a man who had great physical prowess), because he dedicated his life to art rather than to athletics.

***

Galatea

you don’t know me by name,

though you’ve heard of my husband, of course—Pygmalion.

the myth ends with our marriage.

then the real story begins.

(no, the real story begins a year later,

with our divorce.)

it shouldn’t surprise you—

I mean, look at the courtship:

it really didn’t involve me:

he spent months romancing his own private image

of the perfect woman,

not me.

(that happens a lot.)

then, as you know, he visited Venus,

she was impressed with his passion,

and made his sculpture

(his archetype of the life-sized inflatable doll)

come alive:

he proposed immediately,

and, I accepted.

(why, you might wonder.

well, it’s not uncommon for a disproportionate attachment

to develop toward the agent of,

no, the first encounter after,

one’s sexual awakening.

in my case, since the awakening included

my entire physicality,

I think my initial infatuation, and hence, consent

is understandable.)

however, over the next little while,

I found out what everyone knew:

that he had spent years creating

this beautiful statue,

that when it was done he started dressing it,

talking to it, bringing it gifts.

that he caressed it, kissed it—

(I also found out what few people knew:

that he had left a hollow space in the right spot,

and lined it with moss

—he was fucking it too.)

so let’s face it, the man has problems:

womb envy

delusions of grandeur

displaced narcissism

misogyny

stone fetishism

inability to cope with reality

so when he brought home this huge block of marble one day

I left.

•

Pygmalion was a sculptor who detested ‘the faults beyond measure which nature had given to women’ and therefore resolved never to marry. In spite of, or because of, his attitude, he sculpted a statue of ‘the perfect woman’. He grew to love it and began to kiss and caress it, dress it, bring it gifts, and put it to bed at night. Impressed with the strength of his love, Venus made the beautiful statue come alive; he named it Galatea.

***

Dido

Founder and Ruler of Carthage,

First at the bar, and Chair of the Law Association

President of the Business Alliance

Premier of the Year eight years running

Seventeen times on the cover of Newsweek

Lifetime member of Rotary and Big Sisters

(too bad what’s-his-name came into your life)

•

Dido was the founder and ruler of Carthage. Aeneas got shipwrecked on her land, and they became lovers. Eventually Aeneas left to found his own city. Dido then committed suicide.

***

(free downloads of complete collection at chriswind.net)