INSTRUCTING ATALANTA
by Sonja Johanson
Listen to mother.
Leave those apples lie.
You cannot eat them,
they will only take up space
on your mantle, too dusty
to glitter anymore.
Or else you can eat them,
but what is that to you?
Three apples are a mean meal.
Then too, you may think them
too precious for the table
and wake one day to find them
withered to nothing,
or slumped with rot.
Never throw the race.
Better yet, win them all.
Who ever said you had to lose?
Keep the kingdom for yourself.
Never marry, be your own sovereign.
Take a consort, no – take a dozen.
Raise up a generation
of fleet-footed queens
who tend to their own
glimmering orchards.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem is a reflection of the difficulty I have always had accepting the misogyny inherent in patriarchal myths. I remember, as a girl, feeling betrayed that the wonderful heroine Atalanta had allowed Hippomenes to outrun her, and that everyone looked at this as a good thing. Every girl should win her own race. This poem is a message to my younger self, my own daughter, and all the other young huntresses out there.
IMAGE: “Atalanta” by John William Godward (1908).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sonja Johanson attended College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, Maine. She has recent work appearing in The Albatross, Off the Coast, and Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed, and was a participating writer in Found Poetry Review‘s 2014 Oulipost Project. Sonja divides her time between work in Massachusetts and her home in the mountains of western Maine.
Silver Birch Press 
This is a beautifully written and thoughtful piece Sonja! I enjoyed it very much. Great choice Silver Birch Press.
Outstanding piece! Well done!
Thank you Trish and Laura! So glad it found a home at Silver Birch!
Reblogged this on Trish Hopkinson and commented:
This is a beautifully written and thoughtful piece from a lovely fellow poet Sonja Johanson, published today in Silver Birch Press’ Mythic Poetry Series.