I feel the old gods in me breathe.
Subtle hands, contracting intercostals,
feminine fingers that scream and wail when I let men with ill intent come near me -
feminine fingers that announce themselves as Athena, Diana.
Do you have a legacy?
I feel Nefertiti, Osiris, Iris, clench their fists in my gut when I cry in my sleep and wake up angry -
Hecate spits and twitches her paws when my undulating heart lacks the oil that flourished during her reign.
Wings over me, the contorted body of Nike. Protective but irate.
A shout, and a burst blood vessel in the corner of my eye -
by the aging moon this tumult of Dido's wild ichor inside me grows...
Have you ever used your voice?
Athena's words in my head telling me to scream -
Roar of the old gods telling me to run -
Their tongues in the sand and in the grass blades.
Child of flesh and hard times.
An unknown voice from the mouth of my mother commands me - 'take firm grasp of the magic within you'
Perhaps I am too afraid to reply.

This evening, the sun has set in raspberry blush and apricot.
Beckoning down with it those trees that shift through emerald tones the shadowed grass has forgot.
She lies draped, feasting, curved - carved not in marble but with
the ochre the trees leak when the sun is high
Deep and rich. Hands dig into figs and pull the insides out, ******* the ambrosia dry
Leaving fingertips dripping in rose-hip gold oil
myrrh that lights up that dusky soil
So when you touch the ground here, the mud is soft like the moonlight over her
And the juniper berries oft get stuck between your teeth
and make the air taste sweet.
Reflections in water mark no shimmering Daphne. She is flesh and blood
That desires not only to eat, drink and dance
But to feel full in her heart, to cry when needed
Flawed as a child is. She pulls her hair back from her face too regularly
and spits out cherry stones like a boy unimpeded.
And above her head soft stars form in Ariadne's guise
A vision of rich apples and pears, dark by midnight skies.

There she bends her fluid form, milky skin dazzled with sweat,
to pluck the golden fruit from the marble earth.
It eludes her grasp, un-bruised from its fall till
she turns her back to the finish line, to her maidenhood, to her victories
and faces all her determination to catch beautiful and artificial  
apple. Midas’ own greed pulls her into succumbing to the last of Milanion’s offerings and Aphrodite’s snare.
There in her crooked form, her robes still billowing from the momentum, sandals come undone so close to the finish line
Atalanta clutches, desperately, to win her freedom and the gleaming prize.

Yet the Gods know that only one can be won.
Aphrodite’s dove proceeds the victor as he barrels to the finish,
his wedding in sight.