Barbara Hamby: Athena Ode

Road diva, divine mixologist, cancan dancer
of the mandible wars, show me the way of mind
over what’s-the-matter-with-you, girl, swirling from mouths
of righteous dudes. O goddess of attitudes, yes, ma’am,
Madame of the owl tiara, bird woman enthroned,
big cog of the cosmos, born from the noggin of Zeus,
hear my prayer, because I’m adrift in a sea of words, my boat
is cardboard pinned together with newspaper headlines
of the latest war, springing leaks that generals plug
with their double-talk, duck walk to the edge of the cliff,
and we’re holding the bill, still due after ten thousand years,
while women wail in shanty shacks, stack cord wood
for winter, open cans of baked beans, bust the seams
of polyester pants made by the Chinese. O please,
show us the way to put some spring in our spring. Bring
us a bunch of lilacs and pork rinds, something sweet
after tornadoes whip the roofs off our double-wides,
our bungalows deep in the crevices of mountains
older than you. Make us a stew of new shoots, green onions,
pole beans, and summer corn, for we are born
from the dark earth, but we’ve brushed it off, no monkey
here, though sometimes we’re all ape,
trying to escape the knuckle-dragging dance to the finish,
when it’s so clear there’s no one here. O goddess
of sway, don’t give me away, let me pretend I’m a player
with an ace in the hole, because I know I have nothing,
but sometimes only nothing can open the door to something else
.

From Bird Odyssey (2018, Pittsburgh). Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author and the publisher.

Copyright 2018 Barbara Hamby.

Barbara Hamby was born in New Orleans and raised in Honolulu. She is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Holoholo (Pitt, 2021). She has also edited an anthology of poems, Seriously Funny (Georgia, 2009), with her husband David Kirby. She teaches at Florida State University where she is Distinguished University Scholar.