As I write this, there’s about a week left in the campaign for Golden Apples and Poisoned Chalices, a zine centered on female characters from world mythology. The campaign’s initial goal was reached in less than a day—the myth girlies are real and they are powerful—and it’s been incredible to watch stretch goal after goal get reached, too.

I have three poems in this zine, each in pretty different formats. One is in fragments, directly inspired by Sappho; one is a prose poem; and one is formatted partially as a cascade, paired with an illustration I’m super stoked for readers to see. They’re original poems, but they sprang from an existing source: my story “Desire Path.”

In January, I wrote in this newsletter about the making of “Cold Spells” and alluded to other neo-myths in that vein. “Desire Path” is another such. It was published in The Mythic Circle this summer, which I was thrilled by, but I felt like I wanted to stay with Krysanthe and her journey to the stars a little longer. Golden Apples and Poisoned Chalices provided a perfect opportunity to explore becoming a constellation through poetry rather than prose fiction.

The three poems for this zine are more concretely drawn from Greek mythology, the story system underpinning all my neo-myths, than the other Lykosouran tales. References to Athene, the Fates, and other familiar characters are present. But it’s still Krysanthe’s story. “She Of All People,” “Ad Astra,” and “Katasterism” together form a web of imagery and emotion, the journey of a woman to her place in the stars. This is a typical feature of Greek myths, and the common element of my neo-myths. A removal of a human to the heavens is sometimes termed a translation; in LDS theology, the word especially refers to attaining immortality without death.

(There’s also the more humorous example of Bottom and Quince in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)

In writing these poems, I thought about how “Desire Path”’s themes and actual text might be translated partially into poetry, and how all writing is a translation from our minds and spirits into legible words.

Here’s a sneak peek at artist Marii Byrd’s interpretation of “Ad Astra.” I hope you’ll check out the full zine—it’s going to be great!