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Claire Scott

Greek Myths Are Overrated

 

Aren’t you sick of Greek myths? So removed

from reality. Sick of Oedipus killing his father again

and again on his way to Thebes. Sick of therapists

telling us we want to marry our mother, therapists

who obviously have never met our mother.

What of Odysseus killing the suitors, all bloody 108

of them, manipulated by Penelope weaving her ridiculous

shroud to look like a loyal wife. But sleeping with Telemachus.

Or Heracles slaughtering lions and hydras, bulls and boars.

Doesn’t he have anything better to do? We yawn.

 

But here’s the thing. We really do need you Ariadne.

Are you still sleeping on Naxos, dreaming of Theseus

who left you behind, who never really cared,

more concerned with the bloody head of the Minotaur

tucked under his shoulder, hastening back to Athens,

too stuffed with heady success to change the sail,

to think of his father, to think of you who risked your life.

Wake Ariadne! We have lost the red thread to guide us,

the ball of yarn that leads out of the labyrinth

of lies, deception, duplicity and betrayal.

Let us stumble toward dawn’s rising light,

our tangled hearts unknotting.

 

 

Partly Cloudy with a Chance of Dementia

 

My daughter says my mind is sliding

words lost at sea, snagged in seaweed

tangled in silt

 

the round thing you put your supper on

 

I have post its on my fuzzy night shoes

my favorite red fruit, the photo

of my sister, or maybe my aunt

 

pills from my daughter dissolve on my tongue

 

post its on top of post its, no idea

which is the right one and what on earth

[no break]

 

is calamander doing on my desk

 

living in the shadow of the valley of lost words

 

but where was I going with all this? oh yes,

she (Lucy? Layla?) says no more bourbon

but I hide it somewhere, ha!

 

but look! there is toilet paper

floating into the harbor

followed by persimmon and potato peeler

 

I scoop them up in the thing with holes

dry them off and take them home

yet still fewer and fewer words

 

until I walk out of this watery world

under spinning stars and

a yellow saucer in the sky

 


Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.





 

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