Hive Ave Fall2024 - Flipbook - Page 18
Poetry
Hive Avenue Literary Journal
Pandora
Ella Hendricks
like pearly, sea sprung Aphrodite
poor girl with no mother,
dirt-borne: sculpted, stroked,
caressed, clenched, strangled
by Hephaestus,
the god’s 昀椀ngerprints
engraved into her skin.
formed in the image of Man,
the punished, created as punishment.
forced to bear children, bloody
with kisses, lingering touches on
white nightgowns–
stabbed in the gut,
leaking blood onto freshly laundered sheets.
gifted – No, burdened
with the eros of others – No
wonder She, who was the 昀椀rst girl,
would claw at that gilded trove.
how could she not?
childhood stolen: never to run wild as Artemis
or dance as crazed as maenads, instead
frozen Daphne in Apollo’s deadly gaze.
Ariadne and her thread,
Leda and that egg,
can you really blame Hera and her rage?
‘lovely evil’ they claim,
men all see the same.
she’ll tear you open at the seams
like the trove she pried
tears in her swollen eyes –
Desperation, bringing with her
chaos, destruction and demise,
or 昀椀lled with terror
she surmised a way
to take away her pain, to free her
from his wretched gaze, Liberation.
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