Legends are like messages passed along a frayed cable,
or tucked between cupped fingers. Children cheek-to-cheek
to tell tall tales. Like how about this one: once upon a time,
Prometheus started a game of telephone on the playground
and passed it along to Shelley who passed it along to a poet.
And in that way, titan turned genius turned girl.
I wonder if I can pen a pantheon through chain mail, set sail
in my inbox and call it Pandora’s, hoping for somebody to bend.
Send this note to all of your friends for good fortune in this coming
year. And in that way, I forward screenshots of screenshots
snapped to distortion. Lent from phone to phone until corrupted,
coarsely pixeled like RGB grains of sand. Glass bottles blurred
by glitches, a chain message far from home, drift ashore;
maybe the box was once just a spam message. Or:
an unfinished book missing its end. Maybe the girl was more like
Pandora, then, poor thing—a third-generation myth. Diaspora of deities.
Too many stories at once. Franken-thing. Swinging the scalpel
towards the page in vain, as if hoping for the chapter to chip.
or tucked between cupped fingers. Children cheek-to-cheek
to tell tall tales. Like how about this one: once upon a time,
Prometheus started a game of telephone on the playground
and passed it along to Shelley who passed it along to a poet.
And in that way, titan turned genius turned girl.
I wonder if I can pen a pantheon through chain mail, set sail
in my inbox and call it Pandora’s, hoping for somebody to bend.
Send this note to all of your friends for good fortune in this coming
year. And in that way, I forward screenshots of screenshots
snapped to distortion. Lent from phone to phone until corrupted,
coarsely pixeled like RGB grains of sand. Glass bottles blurred
by glitches, a chain message far from home, drift ashore;
maybe the box was once just a spam message. Or:
an unfinished book missing its end. Maybe the girl was more like
Pandora, then, poor thing—a third-generation myth. Diaspora of deities.
Too many stories at once. Franken-thing. Swinging the scalpel
towards the page in vain, as if hoping for the chapter to chip.
C. T. Dinh is a Vietnamese-American student and storyteller. She likes to paint and write prose, poems, and computer programs, sometimes all at the same time. Visit her online at cyborg48.github.io.