Fiona Benson

Alcmene gives birth to Hercules:

By the third term I was so immensely swollenI could not see my feet, my womb stretchedand hanging to my knees. So when in the time of Capricornthe pains came on I welcomed them with relief;but then the child jammed against the too-tight neckof my cervix, and for seven nights and seven daysmy body was a rag between two wringing hands.I vomited till I was emptied to...

small and thready      smells mousy

unhearthed, derelict,      crawled into the husk

of his unself      like a chrysalis

his pin-heart flittering      in the grimy webbing

dry and seeming dead      poke him with a twig

and he lunges chittering      like an angry rat

that sort of...

here she comes, the Pythiacrabbed hands fusedto a narrow pair of follicles

[of no precise origin]

halts at the side of the gorgecramps over her swollen abdomen –her floral tube vomiting blood

[riverbed toxintolerates drought & inundation]

starts up again on trembling stalksbatting off ghosts

[narrow therapeutic indexheals nothing/nectars nothing]

eyes weeping milky sapskin charred and...

On the fifth day, we took him to the Kingto be received. The Queen was beside herself.She intoned constantly under her breath,part-lullaby, part-charm, words bubblingout of her mouth like water from a springin the language of her home, not hard to understand –the cloak-you-from-harm, the defects-invisible,shining in the eyes’ charm, the paternal loveand fidelity charm, the song of...

My father told me to return to my birthplace,the cave of Amnisos, and wait for a woman,that she would need me. I knew what that meant –he’d impregnated another mortal whore.I returned unwillingly to Crete. Everythingwas as it used to be, the same crude symbolism –the cave’s narrow entrance, short stalactitesnippling the roof in rows, the mother-and-child stonegrowing...