Receiving Notes from Mythical Women: XI

Today’s Note from a Mythical Woman is an exchange between Philomela and Procne, and is sent in by Elodie Olson-Coons.

Elodie’s writing has appeared in The Literateur and McSweeney’s among many others, and she is a regular columnist for Work in Prowess. She blogs here, and can be followed on twitter: @elllode.

Philomela and Procne

PROCNE

Sister, do not shout
back.

Do not expose your
self
like film.
They’ll dip you in hot copper.
They will strip your tongue away.

You’re just a sparrow
They will tear out your
song.

PHILOMELA
go on and
wear your soft brown
thriftshop
coat.

wear those
heels
down.
trill your soft jazz song.

You can be a
falcon
you can be a
falcon.

PROCNE

I know how you have sung to
dirty and beloved ears.
I saw when your blood was blue with shame.

You slut-walk.
Meanwhile your sister saw-wings, saw-wings
away.

PHILOMELA

I know you love him and
I forgive you. I sing for you, too,
sister.

PROCNE

You sing for no-one.
You have become dumb.
My husband made you
dumb
when he jackknifed into you.

PHILOMELA

Oh, I have a knife
and juniper and butter and my teeth and my
grandmother’s oven.

I have a taxi number.
I have fucking pepperspray.

PROCNE

Oh, they are always furred and
roaming.
And today you are wearing

that?

PHILOMELA

You are a wolf, you roam the streets
home.
Be a wolf.

I prophesise an
epidemic.
I see the turning of the tide.

PROCNE

the nightingales are stitched and
splayed across the branches.

I see the children and the cameras.

In their eyes I see your eyes,
little sister.

PHILOMELA
Look on, sister.
Look up from the glittering
pool
of your drink.

I am not without fear
I am not on the brink
I am
the smallest of turnings.

PROCNE

Most importantly of all, do not get
drunk
do not
get

videotaped.

You are vincible,
my once-beloved one.

PHILOMELA

And you are growing old.
Look: how it is marked on my face. I do not heal. Despite and still
I go out.
I am not alone.

I am the tide.
I am survived by my familiars –
the oak and the pomegranate and
the wolf cub lapping oil from a lamp.

PROCNE

You are nothing but a match,
a blackened piece of tinder,
sister. I long to protect you.

PHILOMELA

Meanwhile the hoopoe sings.

Receiving Notes from Mythical Women X: Agaue

 

Today’s Note from a Mythical Woman comes from Agaue and is sent in by Rhiannon Easterbrook.  Rhiannon is a classicist by training.

 

Agaue

We all change ourselves by living but some changes are greater than others. I changed the day I killed my son.

I’d been up on the mountain, so they say, for a few days.  I was already not Agaue: mother, princess, lady. It took a death – I cannot say murder – to make me Never Agaue. The shock was like no other to see myself and my future and the futures of those around me. My understanding came into focus beside my Daddy-king and under the light of Theban lamps. Our mouths were red: his with lipstick and mine with blood.

I regret my actions. I should not have been unsisterly and I should not have spread that gossip against poor Semele.

But if, even for a moment, you are able to escape your quarters, to feel the breeze around your legs, the grass under your feet and that strength which seems god-given rise up through your muscles and your tendons and surges with your endless appetite, then do it. Live. Change yourself.

 

Receiving Notes from Mythical Women IX: Selkies

Today’s Note from a Mythical Woman comes from under the sea from the Selkies, and is sent in by Sara Grady.

Sara lives in Scotland, where she writes the brilliant blog Que Sera, Sara? You can buy a book with one of her short stories in it (go on!) here.

 

Selkies/Sirens

when tempests catch in your throat

and your skin is knit too tight.

sister, remember.

 

Salt-sweet songs gnash

‘tween your silken threads

Unravel thy self.

Recognise the tide for what it is.

 

The witching hour approaches

 

From the secret shelf

unearth the ribbon’d box;

on the dusty floorboards

spread mercurial moonlight

 

unfurl the cool waters of welcome, and

slip silver nightsong over your head.

 

Alone you are called to the sea

 

Can you bark at the night and know God?