Pandora
everyone thinks yours is just another Eve story
the first woman
punished for desiring knowledge
and for disobedience
but people forget you were created by the gods
as a gift of revenge for men,
all beauty and mischief–
no, not ‘and’
but ‘therefore’:
it’s boring to be bait:
after a minimal amount of effort and imagination
to maximize god-given qualities
(the male sexual response being far from complex,
this was far from challenging)
what is there?
it’s not easy to be satisfied with attracting men
as a raison d’être–
so that’s why.
__
As a punishment for the possession of fire, Zeus ordered that a beautiful woman be made and given to mankind–she was named Pandora, ‘the gift of all’. Each of the gods had given her some quality that would prove ruinous to man. In one version, these ‘gifts’ were her incredible beauty, her goodness, and her youthful, shy, demeanour, which alone destroyed man for their power to distract and delight. In another version, the gods put the ‘gifts’ in a box and forbid her to open it.
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