I attempted to mash up two of my poems for Read Write Poem Prompt #95: The Poetics of the Mashup…but I didn’t find two poems that I liked well enough to mash up together. So I chose to revise a poem that I was less than happy with.

-Nicole
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This is you and me, divided
by a dichotomy. Mortals have tried
to solve our equation for centuries, using us
as the variables – but x never equals anything
that spoke of combining black and white and then
dividing by two. In the end, they forgot
that we were supposed to be added
together.

They have positioned their styluses to write
me as judge and you as damned,
me as jealous wife and you as temptress whore. They recreate us
in their own images, recast us
as characters upon their stages, bestow upon us
the crowns of their own fears. They prefer to paint you
with the scarlet insides of your tongue, your pussy. They spill
desire upon you, thinking that you forgot to wear skin
and that you should be covered with something sinful and crimson
to pay for your crimes. They douse you
in lustful bonfire and pull you forth,
charred and twisted. I suppose they thought
that your reds would match well with the indigo musk
of my Poseidon’s skin. But as for me,
from beneath the bristles of their brushes,
I always emerge in tones of gold. Everything. My shield,
my sword, my helmet, my eyes, my wisdom, and my judgment
always break forth made of precious
and kissed with the kind of halcyon
that would make Apollo look twice and wonder
if I stole it from him in his sleep.

Now, in their version of the story,
I recast your hair in slither
and your skin in concrete. I froze your face
into death, re-rendering your cheeks and curves
into a tragedy mask:
eyes arched downward like crazy crescents
until they cry sharp icicle corners,
mouth agape and framed with fish lips. They say that
if I were look inside your maw, past your teeth, I would see
Chaos – that black liquid nothing
from which sun, moon, and Earth are waiting to bleed –
and there are no stars. You are stone,
immaculate in your hideousness twisted too far
in each direction. And by their books,
if the curves of your face were to bend any further, they would crack –
and your face would fall to the floor in broken, jagged chapters.

But Medusa, I must tell you something: they forgot
that when they rewrote you in letters of seduction, they would
color you the same red of the Babylonian priestess. They forgot
that they would incense you with the exhale of frankincense and
make you holy. I wish
that you could pick up the ashes from that incense
and use them to reline your eyes and
make them human again. Pull the red heat of African birth
back around your body like a drunken sari
that stole the stars from Vishnu’s hand and
slapped them onto itself for decoration. Stab illusion with your face
and make it die at your feet. Wear serpents as your crown
instead of as your shame. But you and I,
we are imprisoned

by illusion. Ensconced behind
a prism block window projecting endless versions of you and me
into the eyes of mortals. We are lines,
broken apart from our rhyme and rewritten into epics
that we never authorized. They conveniently forget to mention
that they stole Kali from India, broke her apart,
and made you from the black
that they pulled off her skin. They didn’t know
what to do with the insane frenzy
of her drunken blood dance – so they poured it into wine
and called it Dionysus. Now, by their pens
you are an expired candle, freezing men into stone
with your ugly – and divided as we are,
we can no longer break apart Maya, no longer
pierce her and let the scales fall away
to see the truth. So for now,

the mortals will keep thinking
that they can recreate us
as they like.

Written 10/6/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

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