Poem for Gnà by Dave Shortt

"Frigg sends her on her errands. She has a horse that runs through the air and over the sea called Hoof-Flourisher.... From Gnà's name what soars high is called towering." —Prose Edda

Thor, give us today our non-violent hammer


azure windows in the clouds & thunder

because we don't understand beauty


& if Freija were ever to unchristen the body

so the wind created havoc with fair elections—

then in REMs a new candidate would appear

when the last forest was left standing

as weather reports interrupted the wars

& the dainty brains of pheasants

hiding in the disappointing fields

became the evening target

while the equinoxes were changing

into windbreaks at the end of corn rows

& husbandings of blasting hydrogen

on the sun's lee side


there, a deva naive to earth's mealtimes

emerges smokelessly from the nuclear powers

of the fusionary Playfather,

her breasts rivalling the distances of Sol,

her looks of course a mask

Thor's busy trying to topple

while Hoof-Flourisher carries her

into the closenesses of solstices


if it be Gnà

the wind has erased jealousy

along her path from the sun


will the night come

when she usurps her servitude?

or her life is in errand

to the matronly soil's wishes,

she is the earthworm

turning in the mother's heart,

clouds blush

at any allusions to favoritism

in her presence


then they return

into the vaguest grays,

the annunciatory beginnings

where she met her horse

racing in mists of the world's

ineffable childhood


neither oxidations of the heart's memories

or a cuckoo's remarks in witness

of Midgard's x-rated scenery

can forestall deliverance through the open sky

of the messages she carries from Sol


(running out of light

will the cold front pass

into & through

this entire evening of her body?

grabbing onto the moon like clothing,

a sliver of fortune

tethering her horse as she sets

into that


quickly obliterated in laughter of fakir Loki

whose 8-legged stud on earth

keeps galloping into midnight

where one star was left for him to graze on

satiating his great speed

with momentary spiderhood)


Bio

Dave Shortt is a writer from the USA whose work has appeared in numerous print and online literary-type venues, including Molly Bloom and The Mythic Circle 46. More of his poems can be found in Indelible 7, Unlikely Stories, and Peculiar Mormyrid. He's currently studying for a degree in History.

Author's note

The poem was inspired by Denmark, the landscape, the old ruins, the light, the people, the myths.