Note: If you don’t want to read the introduction, you can skip down to the poem.
This week’s Read Write Word Prompt was courtesy of guest celebrity poet Matthew Zapruder. He suggested to us that we use a mechanical process, generate some words, and then try to use those words together in a natural, authentic way. The process for this prompt was to start at a place in the dictionary and chose words moving backwards until we reached another specified point in the dictionary. This was a process used by poet Matthea Harvey to generate two poems, “Terror of the Future” and “The Future of Terror”, which appear in her book Modern Life.
I did it this way: I went to dictionary.com and, starting with the letter z, went backwards, picking one word per letter, and then skipping two letters to w to pick the next, then skipped to q…you get the point. The words I found in this process were: Zelos, warlordism, queerbait, new-collar, hand-to-mouth, ebow, and bald.
When I looked up information on Zelos (or Zelus, depending on the spelling), I found out that he is the ancient Greek personification of “dedication, emulation, eager rivalry, envy, jealousy, and zeal” and that the “English word “zeal” is derived from his name” (source: Wikipedia). He was the son of the Titan Pallas and Styx. He, along with his siblings Nike (victory), Cratos (strength), and Bia (force), were winged enforcers that stood in attendance at Zeus’ throne.
When I read this, two things came to my mind: 1) the similarity between them and the concept of cherabim and seraphim, which also stand around God’s throne in Christian cosmology, and 2) since Zelos personifies zeal, what would happen if he got loose and ran away to Earth? I went there, and now Nike’s looking for him. I hope you enjoy this fun romp through the dictionary, urban life, and Greek mythology.
-Nicole
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He can’t escape my notice. He leaves
his evidence on every street corner,
in every house, in every heart, and on every
wall. I see him in every manifesto, in every hand-painted
piece of angry, sandwich-board real-estate, and in every
raised fist that bruises the sky with its insistence, its
flesh-and-knuckle shouting. I see him
in the rainbow names and threat headlines in red and blue
tagged on the sides of my nights of
brick and stone. I hear him every Friday night
in the Greek-lettered, beer-swirled testosterone taunts
hurled at the collections of black-fringed, bold-eyed queerbait
wearing jeans like denim skin. I see him
in the way the thumbs of the new-collar surfing herd
dance on the keypads of their devices. Yes, those
call-center kachinas wearing masks of dead eyes and
morning, those subway tenants curled like commas
over the tiny glow of their squared screens
as the giant metal monster growls through the
belly of this city. And I see him in the
hand-to-mouth hustle of the stiletto-and-wig, neon-lipped
street priestesses standing on every corner.
It is November. I can hear Persephone keening
before she descends to give herself away again, droning
in ebow tones with a steady, high, electric whine that
floats above the rooftops of this city. Every
non-mortal can hear it – I’m sure Zelos does too,
burning with angel breath and finger flame
right underneath that arch of wailing. I’ll keep
searching –
to seize him,
to sear my hands with his wild struggle of twist and slip,
to ride his crazy horse home to the
top of the mountain. Zeus is going
bald with worry.
Written 1/6/10
© 2010 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
Stumble It!
Hi Nicole,
‘curling themselves upward until they fade,
dying of disbelief in the cold’ is a great line. As is the idea of Zeus going bald with worry!
It is November – love this stanza!
Wow. The images of urban life are so vivid and alive in this. I especially liked the part about “snaklings of white vapor.” This is a really strong piece.
“Eruptions…” was my favorite stanza, but the poem was strong all the way through. One of my favorites of yours, so far, that I’ve read.
nicole a fantastic, whimsical take on the challenge this week, very much enjoyed. “beer swilled testosterone” a pleasant chuckle. very much enjoyed your interjection of greek mythology, gods and goddesses among urban landscape as portrayed is very relatable to our current communities and society. -lawrence
This is gracefully executed and brimming with poetic zeal, particularly your handling of the first person POV thoughout and especially stanza 3, I love the language and unique tone, imagery.
Crimony. Every time I think that you can’t possibly top yourself, you do it again with another epic. “Call-center kachinas wearing masks of dead eyes”… my body is trying to climb out of itself in reaction the brilliance of lines like this.
…okay, that was a weird way to express my approval. Anyway, amazing. And congratulations on the RWP interview!
Hello, everyone, and THANK YOU for stopping by and reading. I always appreciate your comments and compliments.
This one was kind of tough for me, namely in making sure that I used the words together in some sort of logical relevance, and I found the easiest thing was to tell a story. Once I found out who Zelos was, it became easier for me to do this.
@Lawrence: I’ve been long fascinated with Greek mythology. I started reading about it in high school, but along came college, and I stopped reading much for pleasure. Course work, you know.
Anyway, I keep digging into mythology just because no matter how old the stories are, they either a) have something that is relevant to our day and age, or b) still reveal things about human nature — jealousy, love, hatred, loyalty, infidelity, and so forth. All the stuff that makes us human.
@Tina: Oftentimes, it’s easier for me to write in the first person. It helps me to get inside a persona’s or character’s head to tell the story and reveal what’s on the inside.
@Joseph: Thank you! I used to be one of those “call-center kachinas”, and I hated every minute of it. I’m naturally an introvert, and for me, having to do so much personal interaction during the course of an 8 hour work day was like try to force a tiger to learn how to knit. Just…wrong. I drew back on that experience of feeling dead for that image.
Really fantastic! I can see the images in my head while reading.
Pamela