Pretty by Catherine Foster

statue of woman turning away from viewer

Photo by Oskar Młodziński on Unsplash

Pretty

Is that all the world will ever remember about me

That by chance I was born with the arrangement of features

That most pleases the senseless whims of men

Pretty

My mother Leda was pretty too

And Zeus took the form of a pretty white bird to pursue her

The daughter of a beauty and a swan

From the very beginning pretty was all that was expected of me

Pretty

The stolen gem that caused a bloody war

The shiny trinket the young prince just had to have

I didn’t ask Paris to take me

Then again I never asked Menelaus to marry me

So is there really so much of a difference

Pretty

Paris keeps singing my praises

“Most fair ivory skin, hair like a chestnut river…”

I tune him out

He’s dimwitted and rash but I can’t hate him

I pity him, even

A helpless little pawn in the game of the gods

Just like me

Pretty

I pity them all, really

Too blind to realize there are more important things than pretty

Their streets will soon be washed in a pretty hue of crimson

Men will kill and fight and die

And I will end up in one set of arms or another

And the sun will rise and set just as it always has

Will they keep on fighting over me, I wonder

Even if I do end up dead?

I would make a very pretty corpse.

Bio

Catherine Foster is a poet and engineering student from Cincinnati Ohio. She writes poetry to find magic in the mundane and further her understanding of the human condition. Some of her favorite poems are "Ulysses" by Lord Alfred Tennyson, "The More Loving One" by W.H. Auden, "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver, and Catullus V.

Author's note

"Pretty" is from the voice of Helen of Troy. In Greek mythology she is known as the most beautiful woman in the world, the wife of Greek king Menelaus who was kidnapped by the Trojan prince Paris, leading to a long and bloody war between the Greeks and Trojans. While most tellings of the Trojan War tend to be dominated by the male characters fighting over Helen as if she were an object, I wanted this piece to give Helen herself a bold voice in the story. Studying classics for four years at an all-girls school shaped my perspectives about how women are represented in ancient literature and made it possible for me to write this poem.