Mythology

Myron Michael

(This is how Jesus met Diana at an existentialist park, as he was working to regenerate the wheel-chaired limbs of an amputee who, in figuring the moon, had felt the strident chords of her will before—wherewithal withstanding, a pentagon was erected right next to Diana’s temple as Jesus, with the wiredrawn hair of a universal lock, wiped spittle from the amputee’s mouth.)—She was crouched like a stem behind a star. She tiptoed into the open, with an arrow aimed at Jesus’ crown. The amputee, looking down at where his legs were missing, remembered then, her rage, and how it cut though faith like a question of doubt but swung, as if a sickle, at two stalks of corn. He prayed, and he chanted, he planted his voice in Jesus’ ear. Jesus witnessed her awareness, and then fed the amputee a palm of tears. The amputee trembled at the goddess whose bow was next to nowhere from Jesus’ neck; when it became a crescent, she yelled. Her birdcall flushed through biosphere and woke God asleep on a holy hammock. A million eyes popped into being and a billion worlds popped into question. Before she could decapitate Jesus, God snapped a lotus; then Jesus snapped and turned the tables. (Lights in the pentagon came on, and her robe fell off. Diana became renascent but saw that she was naked, and so covered herself with a world of trees.)

© Myron Michael

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Myron Michael is a producer at Move Or Die (poetry collaborations). His poetry is anthologized in Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds, Cave Canem XII, and Another & Another. His poetry appears online at Harvard Review, Nanomajority, The Revolving Door, Outside In Literary and Travel Magazine, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, and Step Away Magazine. In collaboration with Microclimate Collective, he has exhibited work at Eidolon, Perfect Place/No Place, and X LIBRIS. As a participant in Broadside Attractions/Vanquished Terrains, he co-created Vertical Horizon. He is the author of the chapbook Scatter Plot and co-author of Hang Man (Move Or Die, 2010).