Three Poems by Josa Keyes
by Josa Keyes
September 2023
Mothering
His toothless mouth tugs at my breast
He grasps his boneless foot within his hand
Time stops in bee hummed warmth of afternoon
I cannot move,
He weights my body down to earth
Without him I would float away
His limitless demands are all my joy
In moments, he'll leap up and run
Forget the breast, my milky love and care
He's off to school, all yells and grubby knees
He's bearded, gruff and grown and gone
And I'll sit and doze, absent of his needs
As light as empty air beneath the trees
A celestial catfish prefigures the behaviour of men on dating apps
I’m in the National Gallery,
Gazing at the frantic rounded bum of Ganymede,
(Designed by Damiano Mazza to titillate some tired plutocrat,
Who no doubt ordered his pet artist to tint the boy’s posterior
Rosy with the blush of setting sun).
The teenager clings to the eagle, so hardly snatched.
It looks to me as if the bird feigned docility,
Crouched, humble and inviting, on the ground.
The silly Trojan boy climbs on his downy back, maybe for a dare.
The bird shoots up, so high, so fast, that Ganymede cannot let go,
For fear of falling to his death.
Most other painted Ganymedes are full-frontal, snatched with eagle’s claws and beak.
Mazza may have had in mind a fellow victim of godly romance fraud,
Who chose the least-worst scenario over certain death.
Europa, posing on the beach like any influencer,
Met a great and curly bull, rose garlanded, who ambled up all friendly,
Nuzzled at her hand until she climbed aboard. Why?
(These days it would’ve been for TikTok fame.)
Foolish Europa to fall for such a scam.
It’s that catfish Zeus again, and off he goes,
Plunging through the sea – maybe she can’t swim so fears to jump.
Unsisterly betrayed wife Hera raged up in the clouds,
Took out her spite on Zeus’s victims – not on its rightful object.
She turned poor Callisto into a bear.
Zeus solved that problem in his chilly way by casting both up high
As Ursas Major and Minor, constellations in the inky sky.
Once Ganymede outgrew his twinky charms,
Celestial HR found the lad a job behind the Olympian bar.
(How the scent of stale wine on ancient breath would sicken after aeons).
Like Callisto and her son, the boy’s career ended
In that classic Zeus retirement plan of spattering him
Across the face of heaven as Aquarius, forever bearing cups,
And close to Aquila the Eagle as a tactless aide-mémoire
Of the kidnap plot that kicked off all his grief.
Pretending to be something you are not
Is a recurring theme to Zeus’ ‘seductions’ and indicates to me
Extreme sexual insecurity – no matter all the thunderbolts at his command.
There was blank-eyed Cronus – otherwise known as ‘Dad’ –
Terrified of what happens to us all: being displaced by offspring,
Complicated by godly immortality.
There’s no sidestepping for the rising generation if you’re just stuck for all eternity,
Adamantine like a man-hole cover through which no shit can rise.
Cronus ate his kids until his wife Rhea grew wise
And handed the devourer a stone wrapped in a Babygro
(I hope it gave him fearful indigestion).
Rhea fled with the infant Zeus, hiding him so far away
That he became detached from love,
And fearful he was not good enough, not beautiful?
Like those men who steal an actor’s image for their dating profile.
Can’t tell you how surprised I was when my date turned out to be the real thing,
Somewhat faded, but his beauty did not reflect his nature.
He ranged about like Zeus seeking
A wide variety of women – he wasn’t picky.
I was to be flattered to join the throng that hastened through his bed.
He showed me on his mobile phone his negative STI results,
Described in detail all the kinky intimacies he’d enjoyed,
Top class flirting to entertain me on our first – and only – date.
His father too sounded like quite the piece of work.
I wonder if Zeus did that? Boasting about all the clever forms he’d taken up
To trick the next girl – or boy – on his extensive list –
I assume the sex was pretty basic, though:
No time for complex roping up, role play or elaborate lingerie.
‘Oh yes, Io, that was fun,’ Zeus would say, ‘Quite difficult at atomic level
To create the local fog in which to stealth and grab her unawares.
As for that shower of gold (it’s not a euphemism ha ha)
Which landed me in sugar baby Danaë’s willing lap –
Molecularly complex to combine intercourse with alchemy.’
Let’s be clear, it was always rape with Zeus.
What would you do if a swan, capable of snapping your arm
With one swipe of its alabaster wing, descended with frightening intent,
Claw-tipped black webs scrabbling at your thighs?
Leda can’t have struggled, terrified.
But that’s the rapist’s ages old defence, isn’t it?
‘I thought she was consenting – she just lay there, let me do it, didn’t she?’
In the British Museum
Was it for those girls
As for us before a teenage dance
Excited, brave, dressed in their best
Did they giggle over handsome soldiers
Chat and help each other weave those plaits
With golden leaves and wires
Rub scented oils on unlined necks
Brush kohl around their peerless eyes
Crush red petals
To bring a fragile blush
To cheeks that hidden fear had blanched
Did they believe
The party would go on within
The tomb’s embrace?
Who spiked their drinks
To dull their fears enough
That they’d walk willing down to die
In stinking darkness
Had they heard the horses scream
As priests slaughtered them to draw
The dead king’s chariots into hell
Could they smell the blood
Or was their faith so strong
That they could override the carnage?
Now they lie
In orderly rows, curled like foetuses
Legs bent, hands under cheeks
Slotted neatly, facing all one way
No struggle and no signs of pain
Although it’s hard to tell
Some 4,000 years have passed
Since those girls had lives cut short
To satisfy entitled greed
For the best of company
Beyond the grave.
