alice mythologizes

Zeus Tries His Luck at Online Dating

by Alice

Or: Even Ancient Deities Get the Blues

  1. Will you save me the choicest bits of meat when you sacrifice a calf
  2. Will you sacrifice your first born
  3. Will you swear to remain a virgin
  4. Or to become one
  5. Do you speak in tongues when you speak in prophecies
  6. Have you been a tree a bird a woman fleeing on foot
  7. Have you turned into stone
  8. If you had to choose a ravishing which would you choose
  9. A swan a bull a cascade of coins
  10. Hymen is the god of marriage
  11. Will you obey us
  12. Will you call us Father
  13. Will you call us Daddy
  14. Will you praise us
  15. Will you praise us
  16. Will you praise us
  17. Will you call it love

~e. alice isak

[Quick note for station identification after the jump. Hope you’ll join me!]

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The Gift

by Alice

“Eurydice, dying now a second time, uttered no complaint against her husband. What was there to complain of, but that she had been loved?”
— Ovid, Metamorphoses


Disregard what poets tell you. 
They hear the thump of their own hearts
and think they have discovered a universe.
Or presume that my beloved, musician to the gods
who never flubbed an entrance in his life,
might in eagerness miscount the beats remaining
to lift his wife back out of death.
Turn for me too soon, an accident.

You living march toward darkness
like a parade, joyous and cacophonous
and blind. Whereas I have already worn my shroud.
And I have already tasted ashes.
The sunlight you steep in cannot thaw bones
already chill with such fore-knowledge.

See the truth. In his final triumphant crescendo,
Orpheus heard a single word fall
from my mouth like a stone:

“Turn.”

And true love did. 

~e alice isak

Medea Before the Argonauts

by Alice

Somewhere in a story, not yet knowing Jason’s name, Medea dreams of floating away across the wine-dark sea into adventure. Her brother’s dismemberment yet awaits her, and the scattering of his parts upon the ocean like torn bread tossed to ducks. Dragon-teeth remain unplanted, a father’s treasures unravished. Many years and many tales not-yet-told lay between her in this moment and the slaughtering of rivals with sartorial poison, the kebab’ing of sons on barbeque skewers to serve at their father’s remarriage feast.

Do you believe for one moment she dreams unbloodied?

Even before the evils, back when her smiles were still Glenda-the-good-witch charming, Medea caught the mind’s eye. More than Jason ever could, that milquetoast memorable for theft and desertion, and capturing the love of a woman so far beyond him that only rankest misogyny stifling to stillborn our daughters’ horizons explains it.

I would be Medea, if I could. Even in the before, yes. And in the after, a thousand thousand yeses. I would stand bathed in blood and vengeance; I would know the dangers of disobeying and fling myself regardless from an Olympic peak.

Wait. No.

Not regardless.

Regard-full.

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Poison Apple

by Alice

“Wanna bite?” the old woman asked,
holding out her cherry-red confection
polished and gleaming as a new Corvette
or a little girl’s patent leather shoes
on Sunday morning.

Should’ve tipped me to the truth, that glow alone.
Nothing from nature shines straight from the tree,
the earth, the ocean. Not before violence:
the pearl deslimed of its oyster’s flesh,
coal hewn from the depths and lit ablaze.
Even fruit does not reveal its juicy glisten
until split open by greedy teeth.

But I was tired and not attending as I should.
It’s long days, caring for grown men small enough
to resemble children—or call them children
grown destructive enough to resemble men. No matter.
Princess is only a title that escapes drudgery
when some other woman’s close to hand.

What I’m saying is:
Maybe I did notice, after all.
Maybe I did understand.

Maybe I ate it anyway.

~a.i.

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First Apple

by Alice

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The story that started it all is not a woman’s disobedience, but a woman’s hunger. Generations of daughters cursed because of what one woman put in her mouth, chewed, swallowed.

“Do you really want to eat that?” my mother asks.

Love does not put down a plate only to insist that you abstain.

Love does not hold out scent, flavor, the crisp bite you can already feel sweetening against your tongue, and tell you: “Don’t eat.”

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Skin-Deep

by Alice

Once upon a time, in a kingdom very far from the sea, there lived a little princess who spent her days scooping up frogs and kissing them full on the mouth (though with very little tongue). This was the destiny bespoke her: that her lips would one day free a prince, who would come to rule her people with justice and grace and love her as deeply and true as only a man with a second chance at life can.

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One day, the little princess noticed a strange thing happening. After each kiss, even as the frogs remained all entirely frog-like, a green splotch would bloom upon her fair skin. Then two splotches. Then three. No amount of lemon juice or pumice stone undid the pigmentation. Soon she grew quite mottled, her once smooth complexion pebbled and waxy to the touch.

“Well, no matter,” she thought to herself, “for isn’t this the essence of love? To transform ourselves without question into that which our Beloved will most desire?”

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