Jupiter 2/3
From the Ashes
When I was told my mother’s photograph was saved from a fire at the Bellefaire agency, I thought of her as Europa, daughter of Phoenix, whose beating wings could have upstaged Jesus at the Resurrection.
She fell for Jupiter, and bore him Minos and Rhadamanthus, who became godfathers in the Underworld, and also the Minotaur, who had a taste for Athenian youths.
She seemed a bit surprised by all this, and felt maybe she was to blame. But then a mother’s life doesn’t end when she gives birth – or does it?
I later learned the fire hadn’t happened. It was a cover-up to protect her privacy, from me.
Io
Why do we do it – for men?
Or men we mistake for gods?
I learned to moo to fool his wife
slap away gadflies to cool our secret.
Until the shadow times when he licks me
With borrowed heat.
Asteroids interrogate my skin
And my orbit falters, now.
Innocence is wasted on the young
And who writes poems for the old?