"Scheria"
In the spirit of "taking it easy," an offering from the VS archives
Scheria
The betrayal, one might say, was hers—she who left
the palace of his mind, the lamps
burning themselves black: smoked
globes like murky oracles. It’s true
when all was lost, his men
sunk with the splintered ships,
when he alone remained
suffering the sea god’s wrath,
there was a girl. He watched her run,
her muscled thighs and oiled shoulders
gleaming like a prince’s, servants
toppled in her wake, and stayed
hidden behind the lilac
spears of vitex, tongue tip curled
in its cave, trying not to think of her
wine-dark quim, the brackish nest
he’d burrow and the pearl
he would persuade, polish until pleasure
split her open. Cunning
king: he knew which words to place
like tiles clicking soft against
the surface of her knowing. Youth
is a girl who believes
a man just washed up by the tide,
papyrus sealed in a flask,
her fate to cipher. At night, in his bed,
he thought of her tunic balled on the floor
and three times stood, started for the door
determined he would go to her
and sink like a stone in the ocean.
Instead he sat on the sand
watching her swim herself small, past the breakers
where her sisters could not follow,
fingering a piece of glass
he’d plucked from the shore’s
mosaic. It left behind
a damp indentation.
Why he left her out of the story
I would have you tell me. Man of exploits,
great tactician. Did you think
I would bear the burden of your secret?
Man they call kingly, great-hearted, enduring.
Man they call hothead, mastermind, tale-teller.
Man they call sacker of cities, have you forgotten
my name means burner of ships.
It’s a chemo week1, so when I say I’m tired: I’m really tired. In the spirit of “letting myself be tired,”2 as those zany docs like to suggest, this week I’m sharing a poem that first appeared in The Missouri Review. Its companions are paywalled, but you academic types can get to them via JSTOR if you’re interested. (If you’re an editor, you can get to the whole looking-for-a-home manuscript through me.)
I don’t remember much about the writing of this poem and have never felt compelled to keep anything resembling archives, but my email oracle reveals that I foisted it on my favourite first reader in June of 2018, which sounds about right. I was thinking about power, about who constructs the narrative, about who is left out and why and what a piss-off it is. I’d wager I’d recently read Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey: Scheria is where the shipwrecked Odysseus is discovered by the youthful princess Nausicaa, who helps the wanderer on his way, but when Odysseus tells Penelope the story of his travels, Nausicaa’s role goes unmentioned.
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Alternatively! There’s nothing I like more than hearing that a poem you read here did something for you, or that you forwarded it to a friend or read it out loud to someone you love: I can’t trade that for coffee, but it also keeps me going.
It’s also a good news week, as the first post-radiotherapy scans show a positive response to treatment so far.
Okay fine the truth is that I’m trying to write about a poem for some other vehicle and not actually taking it all that etc. Except I might take a nap after I hit publish.
Just, incredible... Vitex !
Re footnote #1: Very good news! (Will return later to read the poem slowly and with intention.)