Sapphics
Remembered
Her Delta a pyramid banked on its
three sides by the diverging mouths of the Nile:
papyrus shimmering on the surface that would
become her markings.
In lower-case it was the perfect apple,
bittersweet, the stem of it hanging from the
bough that has always been within reach of
most discerning hands.
The melding of this : apple and pyramid
fragment and blank space is the allied myth that
created her and cracked wide open the
banks of memory.
Standing on her promontory, she took stylus
in hand, and wrote us into her future: I tell
you in time to come someone will remember us,
she said and we did.
Janet Mason's upcoming readings and appearances
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Sapphics
for Aphrodite
Aphrodite, in your blazing chariot,
I do not ask to be loved by anyone
against her will, to be fled from
or to be pursued.
I do not ask for anything that will
sever my breath with anguish; I do not wish
to destroy or to be destroyed.
I do not wish for
anything other than for the stars to blaze
in my pulse until breaking, shattered, and
incandescent, I am consumed : the moon's rays
intent upon me.
Aphrodite this is all I ask of you,
you who hold the Fates in my hands,
and you, of the golden winged chariot, in
whose temple I burn.
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The Sirens
I remember, yet the Sirens sing and all
is lost; the crescendo of their seven tones
is my anguish dashed on their rocks; my
bleached bones beckon me.
I am no longer lashed to the mast; still a
longing breaks me : the center of me is air
filled with voices that seduce and shatter
the heart of my own song.
Her voice fills me yet I am lost in perplexity:
Is she one or many? Is she serpent or
woman? If she is half bird and half woman,
will she fly away?
Will she take her song with her and leave me hollow?
When will the voices
that fill me be my own?
O Aphrodite of the
fixed stars sing me into existence.
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Three
Sapphics -- Janet Mason 
Click here to read the first place award winning a woman alone poems from Philadelphia Poets 2009