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A Literary Blog

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I am a writer based in New Jersey. I have a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a Master’s degree from the University of Toronto. I have experience as a German to English translator, a technical writer, and a grant writer. In my writing, I explore myth, legend, and languages. This blog is devoted to my past and future writings. – Johanna Rodda

  • Babel



    Shining tower, rising high

    to the very house of god.

    Ivory white in mythical hue,

    there is none it hasn’t awed.

    Stone upon stone in herculean travail,

    built in Shinar the land,

    tower high of but one tongue,

    rising high, like statue stands.

    Cast down by the one above,

    knowing it had reached too high,

    like Lucifer’s striving dispelled

    by the king of the sky.

    For to reach to god’s very height

    and strive to be above

    is but a force of hubris bold

    and not of tow’ring love.

    But Babel: had it reached the sky

    and not cascaded down,

    the people would have been as gods,

    no longer to give god renown.

    There is a problem in this.

    What’s that? you ask. What’s amiss?

    The matter, I say, is one of place,

    for all things under the sun.

    We are all prized beings,

    and also god is one.

    Thus there should be a place for all under the sun.

    In this world it’s true, I think,

    that all deserve a part.

    So as I unto my own self do,

    so unto others, from my heart.

  • Atlas Agrief



    …and Atlas cried when he felt the full-blown sting of all the good and evil of this earth cramming itself into his infinite mind. So much was said in anger, even fear, that Atlas became very sad, and to such a degree that he wished not to hold up the earth anymore upon his shoulders. Merely thinking this was sufficient to draw down from heaven an angel, sent to observe Atlas’ plight and to give her opinion as to whether the god had served enough of a punishment in his banishment from the world, along with the other Titans.

                The angel said to Atlas, “Why are you crying now, all of a sudden? You have been in this state of punishment for an eternity already. What makes you all of a sudden wish to leave?”

                Atlas replied, “I have reached my breaking point, with so much bad going on around the world I support; so many murders, robberies, and general unkindnesses are rampant there. When I was punished, the gods didn’t count on my absorbing all of these effects from the world I have been given to uphold. Please, dear angel: tell me, please, how I might change my eternity. I have already suffered an eternity already – is this not enough punishment for one suffering man?”

                The angel, in response to Atlas’ suffering, made a gesture of peace with her hands, one hand palm up, the other perpendicular to her body.

    “I can see, and you must, too, that there is a double-edged sword in the matter at hand. Either you release hold of the earth, and be free to roam the stretches and expanses of heaven, or else you support the world for the rest of eternity and be miserable. You would then have to let the world go (in the first instance), and who knows where it would skitter to in the firmament then.”

    “You want me, good angel, to accept the price of condemnable eternity, and to stay where I have been put?”

                “Not so,” said the angel, “I come from a merciful God, who forgives transgressions, and whose only purpose in this world is to oversee his many children. What he desired most of all is for everything to be reconciled in and with this universe of his creation. The old ways, the stuff of myth, are still with humanity, as well they ought to be, for the brain of any human holds, with its trillions of possible connections, in its store a space for myth, and also for God. You are right in your intuitions. An eternity already has passed since your punishment was inflicted upon you. That in my eyes and in God’s is punishment enough for the sake of myth.”

                At this, Atlas turned his neck and head as best he could, with valiant effort, and looked at the angel.

    “So,” he said, “you are releasing me back into the Universe? But when will all the foibles and farces of humankind cease – for anyone supporting this earth will be similarly bombarded by the negative energy that the world is constantly spewing at the upholder of the earth?”

                The angel said, in dulcimer tones, “We must build a new pedestal to take your place, of all the gold and the silver that this world has come to be possessed of, chalice-shaped, to hold up the world in your stead. You must help us in this, however, in gathering the gold and silver, because we are spirits only, while you are physical man. You must do what we cannot. Tearing gold from mankind’s hands will be an arduous task.”

                The assignment seemed to Atlas a fair one, and, with the angel looking on, he slowly slid his body into the ether, with the angel’s wings acting as a fan to keep the world afloat on the sea of space. At once, a glance from the angel sent Atlas down to earth, shrunk from his inhuman size, landing him in the middle of the Amazon, where he reenacted the rush for gold of the Conquistadors of long ago.

                In that river he found not enough gold to make a chalice of. He cried out to the angel, “Where can I go, then, to find the gold that you require?”

                In dulcimer tones that no one but he could hear, the angel said to him, “I did not say that this would be an easy task, wrenching gold from men’s hands, and neither did I say that finding it would be without toil. You are now fully human, as God has ordained, and must learn to live as one who is living. The task of gathering all the earth’s gold is no small task, as well God knows. And he has ordained for you that you must collect all the gold there is upon the earth and transport it to make the chalice. Remain with God, Atlas, and your pains will cease. I will hold up the earth for as long as need be until men and women cease killing each other over gold and silver and other forms of payment. Yours is the task, though, to gather all the gold that resides in the hands of mankind, a task that may well take an eternity.”

                At the angel’s speech Atlas became again sad. Now mortal in the world that he had supported for so long, he knew the task ahead of him to be impossible. As he began to despair, he felt the angel’s wings let go of the earth, and for some seconds he awaited the plunge of the earth into the sea. This did not come, and it was then that he knew that he was truly alone. For, if he could not see the angel and feel her presence, he saw little point in believing that he was in the hands of God. And so, Atlas, as primordial man, found himself alone on the earth that he had so recently supported, and began, as the angel had instructed, to gather all the gold that he could find. Even as he did so, he became aware of himself as physical man rather than as punished god, and for the first time in his existence felt the pangs of hunger and thirst.

                Had Atlas looked up to the sky, he might have found some solace there in amongst the angels and God, but the angel had instructed him to look downwards for gold. And so, Atlas never raised his eyes to the ether and to the celestial spheres, and so could not see their countenances in his time of need. When he had progressed on his task for but a little while, he began to cry giant tears, the tears of one who has seen all along what it is that men and women often do to each other. Now part of that kingdom under the skies, Atlas set out on his long path and journey, despairing, not yet recognizing that the earth is supported by God and gravity, and that, in a calm new future, there would be no need for the world to be propped up either by the hands of one of the gods of old, and that faith and nature would see to it that the world known to so many would be supported within the framework of time and space just as gently as if it were being cradled by the loving hand that supports all things, ancient myths and new ones, what kept it rotating as it orbited the sun, drawing us not any nearer, and having passed the state in our existences in which the sun was a god, to be more fully rewarded by the knowledge that what we have before us at all times is the capacity not to give up hope, no matter that it was the proper time for one of the gods of old to question his the shape of his existence, and, thereby, to release the world fully from the grasp of old myths in favor of the greatest mystery and the greatest love of all.

  • Just One Perfect Dress


    The store is a sea of dresses.

    Red, green, blue, black, juniper, seafoam, taupe;

    long, short, plus size, petite, plain, sequined,

    with adorned bodices, with plush skirts

    reaching out, voluminous, being tried on by eager women:

    white, for weddings, or every color you can imagine

    for a dinner, or a party on New Year’s.

    I follow my sister into the bridal section.

    For a while we wander around, my sister and I.

    She’s looking for a dress that’s short,

    not too flashy, clean-lined,

    that can be trimmed at the bottom,

    with sleeves, ideally – the wedding’s in winter.

    Other eager brides are trying on dresses:

    the idea, of course, being to get the right one.

    Just the right one.

    If you cannot get just the perfect dress,

    you can never have the perfect wedding,

    and, without that, how can you have the perfect marriage?

    I don’t know.

    Is there just one perfect dress for you,

    and, also, just one perfect partner?

    Or, is perfection what we create for ourselves,

    streaming through, finding the joy in every moment?

    Is it?

  • Down From Heaven



    As I looked down from heaven,

    I was saddened much to see

    (from a place where I could no longer

    affect the things that happen in the world)

    she refused to take her six pills a day,

    the god-given remedy for the kind of illness

    no one likes to mention.

    She would not take them ever,

    in the morning, at noon, or at night.

    I saw, looking down, trying to understand

    the bare, pale sickness that wracked her mind,

    that she would do only certain things –

    count her fingers: one, two, three, four,

    one, two, three, four,

    lying in bed or upon a quiet night.

    I guess she hoped that having such firm control

    over her body would yield comfort in spades.

    As I looked down from heaven,

    how could I do anything else

    but cry (if angels can)

    to see how she engaged with men

    she’d met sometimes on the streets of cities,

    going back with them to their apartments –

    they said that they were DJs,

    and so cool – to spend the night

    in full, or just to four a.m.


    To see how little sleep she was apt to get,

    writing furiously in notebooks,

    for hours on end, never looking up,

    in her room, her little apartment,

    or up the streets and then down,

    writing, writing, with every moment

    growing more fearsome, more furious,

    more deep into her own mind,

    thinking thoughts of grandeur, of world renown:

    that she was the next great Shakespeare;

    that the great American novel

    was going to come bounding out of her steady,

    sprawling, scrambling scrawling on the page.

    To see her living fantasies –

    that she was a spy, a secret agent –

    to see her slinking through the streets,

    on a mission, canny, coy, putting together

    the little sunken secrets, to craft

    a view of life I can’t warn her from,

    no, not anymore, and she just goes tumbling,

    turning, every day falling deeper and deeper

    into unrealities: my god – I think –

    one day, she might really try to fly!

    To see all this, and I can’t – I cannot –

    there is no chance for loving interaction

    between angels and the people they care for,

    still plying their days on dusky earth.

    No.

    There is not.

    But maybe – just maybe – I can in fact look down,

    stir a little breath on the leaves of the trees

    as she clambers through a park in town,

    and with that wisp from loving heaven,

    give some rest to her soul.

  • Anorexic



    When I was being treated for anorexia at the health services at my college, they made me turn around on the scale during my appointments so I couldn’t see the number on it. I had no idea how much I weighed. My doctor’s office also didn’t have a mirror, so I couldn’t look at myself there. But no matter. I’d go back to my dorm room and catch a glimpse of my rotund form in my own, floor-length mirror, and I would try not to hate what I saw. I would hate it, anyway.

                “I hope you know that we are just trying to help you.”

                My doctor sat in front of her computer, while I sat just off to the side. My arm was still in the sling from the accident I had suffered a couple of weeks before, and I was thinking about that instead of listening to my doctor. I thought about the patch of ice that had been in the way of my morning run, how, instead of going around it, I had run right over it. In the middle, my feet gave out and I went flying. I ended up with a fractured left elbow, my arm now in a sling that severely limited my range of motion.

    “Sorry,” I said to my doctor, snapping back to attention. With my thoughts straying to my accident, I hadn’t heard what she had said.

                “I hope you know that we are just trying to help you,” she repeated. “It’s possible that, because you haven’t been eating enough, your bones are brittle. That could have been one of the reasons you fractured your elbow. How have things been going with the nutritionist?”

                I shrugged my shoulders, fiddling with my fingers in my lap, unable to look my doctor in the eyes.

                “She says I need to put on fifteen more pounds before I can run again.”

                “In time for the Boston Marathon, right?”

                I shrugged again, still looking down.

                “Guess so.”

                “And you’re not running or exercising right now?”

                I shook my head.

                “My balance would be off anyway if I did,” I said.

                My doctor stared at me as if to determine not whether I was lying, but to what degree. I looked up at her and tried to reassure her with an innocent look.

                “You’re going to have to be extra careful walking the streets,” she said, “so you don’t fall again and reinjure yourself, or break something else. This is Cambridge, after all, capital of snow and slush and ice. Promise me you’ll take the nutritionist’s advice to heart. Have a cookie with dinner or something. Don’t just eat salad.”

                “How much weight have I put on?”

                I just had to know. I weighed in at eighty-two pounds on my first visit, and since then they always turned me around on the scale so I couldn’t see what my weight was. I wished my doctor would just tell me.

                “You really don’t need to worry about that,” she said, looking back at the computer. She typed something in, silent for a moment, then looked back at me.

                “You know,” she said, “you’re such a beautiful young lady, and if we lost you, or if any other bad things happened to you because of your illness – I’m allowed to call anorexia an illness now, and I want you to consider it in that light for a while – I would feel very very bad and also personally responsible. You don’t want me to have to feel bad about myself because my star patient had something terrible happen to her, now would you?”

                I cocked my head to the side. It was a roundabout way of getting at the matter, but then my doctor was clever.

                “I don’t connect my wellbeing with your personal sense of fulfillment,” I said.

                “Oh, well,” my doctor said, turning toward me, sighing deeply and laying a hand on the computer table. “I think it’s also about feeling good about yourself and what you have to contribute. Besides, as I said, your bones may be fragile because of all this dieting you’ve been doing. I’m going to send you for a bone density test. You don’t want to end up with a hump from kyphosis by the time you’re twenty-seven, do you?”

                This, more than anything the doctor had said up to then, made me perk up and listen.

                “What?” A mental picture was forming itself, of me in my twenties with a hump on my back.

                “Yes,” my doctor said. “I’m going to order a test for you at Mount Auburn Hospital. That will show us a little better what we’re dealing with, to see what your bones are like.”

                “What my bones are like?” I asked, still stunned. My mouth was open a little as I waited for my doctor’s response.

                “This really is no joke,” my doctor said. “I think you don’t fully realize how important it is that you get out of this illness.”

                A hump at twenty-seven? Surely things weren’t that dire. She must be making a joke to scare me into cooperating.

                “Go for the test,” my doctor said, getting up from her chair in front of the computer. “Put on those fifteen pounds, and then you can run as much as you want to. Just not over sheer patches of ice.”

                With that, she left, giving me some privacy to get out of my blue paper gown and back into my normal clothes. As I put on my clothes awkwardly because of the sling, I pondered what she had said. Osteoporotic kyphosis at twenty-seven? There was no way.

                Before I left the room, I glanced over at the scale. I looked at it for a long time, letting the thoughts churn in my mind. Thinning bones? A hump at twenty-seven? It gave me chills. Yet, I just needed to step on the scale to know how far from ultimate perfection I was.

                Instead, I draped my coat back over myself and left the office.

  • Fireworks



    The fireworks burst, to the delight of all,

    in gleaming shards, in patches of color,

    scattered in the sky, against the dark.

    And where light was once,

    there it will not be again.

    The light more spirit than substance.

    As if just impulse, upon a black night.

    As if not really something: as if streaks of thought.

    As if nothing. As if not.

    As if all the world could come to be

    the merest streak against the blackest

    wisp of night.

    And choirs would be singing its way to the heavens.

    And fire would burn as bright as stars.

    And all that was would ignite –

    I’d be there, too, riding on a constellation –

    and everything would be the merest burst

    in the vastest emptiness of thought.

    The fireworks burst, like the birth of our being.

    Like the bang so far ago.

    Like light before all things to come.

    Like now. Like nothing.

    Like all that could be.

    With every flicker of light, a flame,

    small and bright, coming from the most primal blaze

    created on the first day of everything.

    Light from dark, and so life began.

    The fireworks.

    Against a night-dark sky.

    And, where light once was,

    there it will not be again.

  • Rose Perfume



    She came into the cafe to meet the man she loved.

    Her hair coifed in a tight bun,

    her dress framing close her slim physique.

    Her makeup was on; a hint of blush

    lay on her cheeks, faint color of blood.

    Her nails were done: pink she chose,

    both on the nails of her hands and on her toes.

    Her stockings little shaded

    the compact shapeliness of her calves.

    Heels as high as her feet were long

    rounded out her whole physique.

    Around her neck: a curl of silver

    with crystals like stars embedded,

    and a silver ring around her finger.

    Her right wrist was braceleted

    with a circlet of thin white gold.

    And, on top of it all, there came

    from the area of her neck,

    and all over her encircled frame,

    a steady haze of rose perfume.

    With a firm step she crossed the space

    to where the man she loved sat.

    When he saw her, he looked up from his book,

    keenly into her eyes, and said with a crooked stare,

    “But I do not love you for your rose perfume.”

  • One Haven Place



    … with a backyard porch,

    and a dog waiting at the front door.

    Carefully I turned my ear, my tiny sister

    spouting to me hopes of what would be.

    A bright and fairy-tale future.

    … and a big space where I could ride my bike indoors,

    and a big pool with a big water slide.

    And my Prince Charming bringing me flowers

    every day, and double on my birthday.

    A tender part of me, that was still a child,

    wanted to believe all the things she said

    would really come to be. How young she was,

    and I was old!

    Already she had given a name

    to where her future home would be:

    castle-like, of course; “One Haven Place”.

    And it would have crenelated towers

    (to sign the word, she used her fingers

    to carve out the jagged pattern in the air),

    and a green courtyard lush with grass,

    with pretty trees that bloomed in May,

    and a big, big bedroom with a big, big bed,

    with posts reaching up ceiling-high,

    lots of fluffy pillows, a comforter

    woven through with thread of gold.

    With a kitchen always open

    to steal into, pilfer chocolates,

    or cranberry scones, or whipped cream,

    mountains of cookies, lakes of pudding.

    And a big, big, great big ballroom

    where all the women, in lovely dresses,

    and the men in fancy tuxes

    would dance the night so lightly away.

    How young, I thought, she was,

    as I sat and listened to all she wanted

    to be real in her dream house, my sister,

    in One Haven Place.

    And how life, then, would in fact

    be perfect.

    I measure the distance between my sister

    and my self not in years, but

    in hopeful wishes made while young.

    Vast her dreams are. Broad they reach.

    Did I, too, have such dreams

    when I was a younger version of myself?

    To have the perfect house, and home,

    husband, kitchen, ballroom,

    and love – and dog, to boot?

    Some version, I think, of those dreams

    has been the purview and province

    of everyone who has ever sought happiness.

    I am older now.

    My happiness is reality-tempered.

    I’ve learned happiness through what is given,

    and what is possible, likely.

    I will hold ever the hope, that my Prince Charming,

    my house with crenelated walls,

    and the dog – to boot – is out there somewhere.

    But what in this would could at all be better

    than to see on my sister’s face

    a smile that told me all she wished

    would one day come indeed to light?

  • The McDonald’s Counter



    In the ward, it’s “the McDonald’s counter.”

    But there are no juicy burgers here,

    no fries, no shake to boot.

    Here, the libations are the pills,

    little tablets in all the colors that be.

    The counter’s just waist-high, with no cover;

    you could jump clear over if you wanted.

    But who would want to do that, anyway?

    Still, it’s the centerpiece of the ward.

    Around it, in the morning, after breakfast,

    at lunch, at dinner, and just before sleep:

    the line forms, a long line, snaking

    all around the dayroom, of people in the ward

    who need the pills to keep them straight,

    or silent, or both at once, or so they’re not anxious,

    or angry, or antsy, so they don’t bite their nails,

    or jump over rails onto a busy street below.

    So they’re not overeager, just have a meager

    sense of where they’re existing, and why.

    The others take them, and so do I.

    And, once the pills are dosed, most retreat

    to their various tasks, or in the dayroom, group begins.

    So, I’ve learned to shelve my fancier notions –

    I’m the President, or leader of the world –

    and to exist instead always within the bounds

    of the rules of existence I have to follow.

    Or, with which I contend. Sometimes, I wish

    this’d end. My up and down, I mean.

    But, ever there, the McDonald’s counter stands

    in the very middle of all our cases, hopes:

    to pill us, to instill in us, notions of how

    life is meant to be well lived.

    Those’re the pills the McDonald’s counter gives.

  • A Cup of Cream



    In the wide café, where I sat and I sipped,

    I saw a man come in not at all like other men.

    No different was his shape. You would have known

    him as a man, whenever seen.

    But he was dressed in rags. Had a lean look

    about him, as if he were one more day

    to starvation, could have used a good, clean meal.

    I watched him come into the café, in the center city,

    hand over crinkled bills for a cup of warmth.

    Out the corner of my eye as I read, I watched

    him sit at a table, a little away.

    He sipped his coffee, soft and slow.

    Then, I watched him still as he went

    up to where they kept the milk

    and poured himself a cup of cream.

    He returned to his seat. No hint of shame.

    No one he turned to look at, head down.

    Met no one’s eyes, just back to his seat,

    sipped his cream in slow gulps.

    A while, then, I watched (from the corner

    of my staring eye) as once again he got a cup of cream.

    Had I seen him on the street before?

    Familiar, his face. Had I passed by him

    on the city sidewalks, sometime, paying only

    scant attention to those without firm places to live

    as I went to the beach, or the store?

    I said nothing, just watched the man, sucking life

    from the tall carafe of cream.

    Who would I have been if I had complained?

    I turned back to my cup of coffee, enjoyed its dark warmth.