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 "... Not even Regis bellowing from the TV can keep order from unrolling under her fingers ..." -- Wendy Taylor Carlisle Wendy recommends these online literary links. |
Penelope Getting older with each day's back and forth shuttle. There's never a moment¹s peace. The only soft thing here's my hands‹from the lanolin, I suppose. Sweet Athena, I need some new jokes, anything to keep the suitor's mitts at their sides. Amphinomus brushed an eager palm against my thigh last week. I nearly jumped out of my dress. I could hit the mattress with any brazen hunk, each chest so taut, it makes my heart race just to see their sword games. I hold out for honor, though, despite my cravings. And it helps to know they love me for my real estate. Today, I disremember if Odysseus, my husband, was the best. Some say I have a magic loom, undoing each day's doing but no one comes, is there, at night as I unravel, tear deep in.
Making the Bed with Ariadne Naturally, being a princess, she objects to cotton sheets--their crisp whiteness suggests the way into, not out of, the maze of sleep--but once she begins unraveling the myster--tuck, reverse, tuck again--she shapes each hospital corner square as a bull's stall, grasps the labyrinth of eyelet and ruffles, that perplexing bedcover, and shakes it out to show its dark center. Ariadne's a match for any household duty. Not even Regis bellowing from the TV can keep order from unrolling under her fingers as she works on. Slipping through the corridors, tangled hours spooling out, she threads her way from room to room, from dim disorder into broad day. ii. According to Minos, her bullish father, Ariadne "made her bed", and "tough" if, when she woke, her dismal sheets chafed. She was "too clever by half", he roared, with "her waiting boat, her ball of twine." And, if fatigue came on like a storm of bees, shut her eyes with hymenopterous lullabies, maybe she could dream of "that Athenian". Friends, amazed she dared to spite her murderous old man, asked, "why"? She answered them, "it suits my sense of order like a well-made bed". She longed for a different home, but Theseus was merciless as daddy. Once his cast-off mistress snoozed he couldn't wait an hour to be gone. I Swan Everyone makes much of it, but truth to tell his offering could have had much more appeal. Trumpeters have limited romantic skills and lack imagination, not to mention lips and thumbs. During the act, I admit I entertained some questions of a theologic nature. The poets say he overwhelmed me on that bank--the sudden blow, the storm of wings. Why do they reckon I gave in? Inquisitive? You bet. And let me say that even mediocre sex can't take the edge off having done it with a God. As for the kids, around the neighborhood my alibi is this: they came from eggs. Don't blame me if they didn't turn out good. ___ -- Wendy Taylor Carlisle Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in Texas, a legendary landscape from which to consider Greek myth. Her work has appeared in print, most recently in Cider Press Review, and on line. Her book, Reading Berryman to the Dog is forthcoming from Jacaranda Press. 
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