Stolen Fire by Emily Bilman

Prometheus Carrying Fire, by Jan Cossiers, 1630s.

Stolen Fire
 
Like Prometheus, she would steal
Fire from the gods, she would snatch
Their power to roam free in town.
She would turn the volcano’s cool lava
Into her lioness-land. She would free
Sisyphus from his constant curse, throwing
His rock into an irrational abyss.
Ceaselessly. But she had a child
To educate. So she tamed the stolen
Fire inside her votive lamp, sold
Loom-woven rugs in the market, made
Circe’s savage den into her home
 
Where she stood tall like a sheath
Of thistle on a sun-drenched heath.
 
Emily Bilman
 
Dr. Emily Bilman is London’s Poetry Society Stanza representative and hosts poetry meetings and seminars in her home in Geneva.  Her poetry book in French is entitled La rivière de soi, came out. Poems are published in The London Magazine, Hunger Mountain, Offshoots VII & XII, Orbis, Poetry Salzburg Review, Iodine, and The San Diego Annual 2014, Aois 21 Annual in America and The Inspired Heart Vols. 1 & 2, & 3, and Ygdrasil in Canada. Two academic books, The Psychodynamics of Poetry and Modern Ekphrasis were published in 2010 and 2013. Her most recent poetry books are A Woman By A Well and Resilience. The reviews can be read on the Troubador/Matador UK website and on http://www.mciwritershouse.com/emily-bilman.html