SWWIM sustains and celebrates women poets by connecting creatives across generations and by curating a living archive of contemporary poetry, while solidifying Miami as a nexus for the literary arts.

Athena gets her first dick pic

 

Medusa was sent dozens of them every day, men trying to prove their manliness by tempting, seducing and then fucking a monster. Fucking the sea god’s conquest! There’s something to tell your mates about. I know, you probably wouldn’t expect that, but that’s what some men are like. It didn’t work out for any of them, obviously.

They send them to Aphrodite too, but that’s no surprise. She’s changed her number dozens of times, but still the dick pics keep coming. Everyone wants the goddess of love to love their penis, to give it her seal of approval. Paris sent her a dick pic, which she hated, like she hates all of them, but she swallowed her nausea and sent him a reciprocal pic and got herself the Golden Apple. Narcissistic little prick. Helen of Troy was much more impressed by his dick pic, obviously.

It took eons before Athena got her first dick pic. Perhaps men were too afraid that she’d hack their dicks off in disgust. But she’s a visual person. Goddess of the arts, after all. She recognises beauty in many things. Including penises. If she had a husband, she definitely would ask him to send her dick pics if he was going away for extended periods of time. Postcards and dick pics, that’s what she’d ask for.

That first one was a masterpiece, just the introduction you want. A well-chosen angle. Excellent lighting, even if she suspected that was more accidental than intentional. A relaxed environment, although carefully curated. A truly beautiful penis, nicely proportioned, well filled out, definitely worthy of sharing. She spent an entire day looking at it. It made her feel warm inside, so that night she had to rub up against one of the columns at her temple at Acropolis. The roof crumbled a little. She never got around to fixing it.

More dick pics followed. There are pics with strap-ons sent too. Not all meet the standard set by that first one. Some she replies to with suggestions on how they could light things better, a more flattering angle, please don’t include your face in the photo, no one wants to see that. Some she deletes straight away and then goes back to that first one to help with purging the bad ones from her mind.

On Friday nights she and Apollo compare their best and worst of the week. Everyone wants their dick to be seen by the sun.


Paula Harris lives in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where she writes and sleeps in a lot, because that's what depression makes you do. She won the 2018 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize and the 2017 Lilian Ida Smith Award. Her writing has been published in various journals, including Hobart, Berfrois, Queen Mob's Teahouse, The Rialto, Barren, SWWIM, Diode, Glass, Aotearotica and The Spinoff. She is extremely fond of dark chocolate, shoes and hoarding fabric. website: www.paulaharris.co.nz | Twitter: @paulaoffkilter | Instagram: @paulaharris_poet | Facebook: @paulaharrispoet

 

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