my yoga teacher kassandra

Andrei Codrescu

has only good news for my body
and for my mind, she warms them
and she becalms them unlike her
greek namesake who left her
listeners terrified and tense
ah the onomastic turnaround
took twenty centuries to turn
the older story on its head
which explains ex-lingua why
my modern body feels comfort
in the new diachronic goddess

Copyright © 2024 by Andrei Codrescu. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 18, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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about this poem

“This poem is a love letter to my YouTube goddess Kassandra, who makes me flexible every morning. She has overturned centuries of disbelief in her namesake’s prophecies, humbling Zeus, the mean god and helping Andrei, the humble human.”
—Andrei Codrescu

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