Archives

Gene Groves
Zeus Is Flabbergasted

Look at him! Fair enough, name your new city
after yourself. Build altars to me, the other gods,
that keeps us happy, doesn’t it?
But this swollen headed Salmoneus has kidnapped
my sacrifices, mine, Zeus, lord of all.

He announced to all Salmonia
that he is Zeus. Look at him!
Safe, so he thinks,
cauldrons chained to his chariot
dragging through streets.

What a racket! He’s bound them with hide.
I’ll have his hide.
What’s he up to? Such noise, I can’t think.
Oak torches hurled into the air like javelins,
falling like lava.

People ducking, diving
scorched skirts, burned bodies.
Salmoneus, a fake Zeus, creates stage sound effects.
His little city, little chariot, little life all mine.
One thunderbolt is all it takes.

Peter J. King
Recollections of a Byzantine Official

                                             (after K.P. Kavafis)

Symeon the Logothetis          stood up from his desk
and stretched; his neck          was stiff, his eyes
were sore and gritty,          and his stomach rumbled.
He had spent the morning          calculating soldiers’ pay,
and tracking down corruption          in the purchase
of Greek fire, and now          he needed food and rest.

He strolled down to the Neoríon,          joined the throng that bustled
through the gates, and bought          some fresh-baked bread
and Cretan cheese and wine          at a taverna on the harbour front.
A regular, he nodded greetings          to the sailors, shipwrights,
sutlers, and sawyers passing by,          and one or two received
a warmer, secret smile. Refreshed,          he strode more briskly
back to where his desk was waiting;          in the quiet of the Strategeíon
(for the staff were mostly napping          through the drowsy afternoon)
he laid out all his writing tools          and his unfinished Chronicle.

Sighing, then, he set to work          where he’d left off
the day before: the reign          of Romanós Lekapenós,
whose dark and liquid eyes          he still remembered,
gazing into his across a cushion          of embroidered silk.

David Melville
Purgatory

                ‘Ma Virgilio n’avea lasciati sceemi –
               But Virgil had left us, he was no longer there –’

               – from Canto XXX, in which the pagan Virgil
               must return to the underworld having led Dante to heaven

Wince not for Virgil solemn on his march
from heaven, the ramble and stumble down slope,
last rays on his neck, and judgment’s gap a stark

crack in the earth; inferno without hope.
Behind him, pilgrim Dante soars to joy
in folds of pure light: angelic throats

whose music rings in blissful, holy voice,
with all existence one vast dream in song.
Yet Dante shall slip down again, psalm destroyed,

bereft of Beatrice, his dead love gone.
At last each poet comes to know the fruits
of paradise are rarely tasted long:

Though saints and lovers sing devoted truths,
artists’ souls ever sink back to earth.

Cammy Thomas
Sea Nymph Leucothea

Swimming beneath the dark waves,
I feel the storm, pressure in my ears,

and look up at Odysseus, his pale legs

churning in the ridges, naked,
alone, clinging to a spar.

As a bird, I break from stinging foam,

land on his broken mast. Once,
I was Ino, a human girl. Humans in the sea

must breathe, unless the gods transform them.

This man will be abandoned. The angry god
will let him die. I remove my magic scarf

to wrap around his middle, but as I reach,

he shrinks away. In his face
I see—I’m no longer human.

Still, he takes the scarf, and it scares

the water calm. I sink back into cold
and foreign gloom that is my home,

turn, and swim down.

Melody Wilson
Medea’s Last Girlfriend Consoles

Yeah, you were kind of hot, out there on that island, and you had skills. Big fish in a small pond. But Jason came along in a Pontiac or a longboat, something about a sheep, and off you went, total defiance. Your brother’s head in tow. Kind of a groupie, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, new to town, in over your head. You didn’t even know all the words, fiancé, fellatio, souffle. Such a bumpkin. You were both outsiders, but he was smooth and shiny, and you were broody, and there were parties. You got to know people. You had the palace, the boys had a tutor, and you could walk around the market shopping for pomegranates and smile. It wasn’t enough, of course, and that thing about the boss’s daughter. Okay, she was beautiful, like Charlize Theron in that J’adore commercial, and you kept saying, “It’s just the dress,” and well, you got that proved. Then there was no turning back; he would send you packing, and the boys would know, and they looked just like him, and well, that’s the thing about scorning.