make them look like bird dung, and unappetizing to predators.
– "Bird dropping spiders" from Australian Museum
My
dear
egg yolks,
golden sons
and daughters, you rise
over my world like Apollo's
golden sun yoked to aureate coated winged horses.
The upper halves of your shells, the lofty arch of my heaven. The lower halves: my earth.
Your
egg
whites: my
pearl moons and
embryonic stars
emerged from my egg nebula.
Hush little babies, don't say a word, Mamma's gonna
disguise you all from cosmic eggs to stool ova, dung of a mocking bird: worthless waste.
Hush
now,
I'll sing
lullabies
about how I scared
Little Miss Muffet sitting on
her tuffet, eating curd and whey, and Humpty Dumpty,
the cracked egghead; I pray that you won't fall prey, sunny-side up for hungry predators.
From
a
maiden
to an old
widowed mother-ofall—I have eaten the flesh of
my mates, to break free from their trap, their tangled web of
lies—the hymeneal yoke1 of men's despotic sway2; I was named a spinster since birth.
Cursed
to
always
hang by a
silk thread pulled from my
belly button-bobbin, and bear
the trauma of Athena's shuttle beating my head,
when I spun texts of the crimes of the gods, and the tomb where their arrogance dropped like flies.
May
you
all grow
up to be
artists spinning texts
showing: the princess in disguise,
wearing the hide of a donkey who defecated
gold. Leda singing her swan song dirge as she lays two gold eggs; the egg-shaped face beauty.
Spin
text
of the
love story:
the goddess of air,
and the East Wind; the plum crested
teal who impregnated her, the six cosmic golden
eggs she laid, and their cracked shells that formed the earth, heaven, sun, moon, and stars: the universe.
1 Phrase taken from Act I in Friedrich Schiller’s Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx translated by Sabilla Novello
2 Phrase taken from Act II in Friedrich Schiller’s Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx translated by Sabilla Novello
