Leda

Salvador Dali

Leda and the Swan

Leda

Come not with kisses
not with caresses
of hands and lips and murmurings;
come with a hiss of wings
and sea-touch tip of a beak
and treading of wet, webbed, wave-working feet
into the marsh-soft belly

~ D. H. Lawrence ~

Stavros Papanayotou

Leda and the Swan

leda 1

there is nothing luminous

about this.

they took my children.

i live alone in the backside

of the village.

my mother moved

to another town. my father

follows me around the well,

his thick lips slavering,

and at night my dreams are full

of the cursing of me

fucking god fucking me.

leda 2

a note on visitations

sometimes another star chooses.

the ones coming in from the east

are dagger-fingered men,

princes of no known kingdom.

the animals are raised up in their stalls

battering the stable door.

sometimes it all goes badly;

the inn is strewn with feathers,

the old husband suspicious,

and the fur between her thighs

is the only shining thing.

leda 3

a personal note (re: visitations)

always pyrotechnics;

stars spinning into phalluses

of light, serpents promising

sweetness, their forked tongues

thick and erect, patriarchs of bird

exposing themselves in the air.

this skin is sick with loneliness.

You want what a man wants,

next time come as a man

or don't come.

~ Lucille Clifton ~