This is the second installment of Homegrown Stories’ Year of the Poet. We again asked Melissa Ginsburg for an inspirational poem and, with Apollo, she did not disappoint.
Our ten video artists have reimagined Apollo’s birth, reign, and demise through music, image, and text.
Apollo, by Melissa Ginsburg
Wolf god. Sheep god. God trapped in a mine. God of fields and
flowers. Of pastures and herds. God of exoskeletons. Hunter
and flayer, feeder of snakes. Healer god of arrows, of oracles
you will never figure out. God of colonies and the crying rock.
Unshorn god. Shining god of mice and islands.
Wolf of healing. God in the womb already frightening. Killer of
cyclops maker of lightning. God of moderation. Monster of
light. Tender protector. Hunter god liar god. Colonizing god,
god of ships leaving, of sun in the sky, of tunnels and holes, of
sowing a seed. Slayer of Python. God of the deal.
Farm god. Lover god. God of my sister Artemis goddess of that
sleek lens through which I look, the moon. God of ships and a
sun. Supplier god, contract god. Twin god and wave god.
Waving goodbye on the dock and the ship leaving god on a
wave.
God of the oracle stops. God of compromise and centuries. God
of whispered riddles swallowed on an island. Snake-eaten god.
God of dried up waters, cratering depths. Canyon, erosion,
billowing out. Tributary god cut off from its source. God of the
dry bed, of the cold war. Together with Artemis slayer of
progeny. Husbanding the silver arrows. Quiver in the outskirts
of the sky.