Calypso & Odysseus
Ensnared in this silken web, bound in sinew
and silverskin, am I the spider or the wasp?
The thorn in your soft abdomen is my stinger;
Dipping into my pulse are your fangs.
I rapture in your honeyed words then revel
in the spitfire venom seeping into my skin.
Tell me, we both matter, don’t we?
Dress me in needlelace, let my blood bloom
into yours. Echo my eternal fate across
the entropic Elysium. For If I could spell
farewell with the damned spot in my palms,
smoke from the revolver, if I could take flight
on cellophane wings, paint over the scars
in my stripes, I’d hold you still within the sickly
dark of myself, the ichor-drunk fly in my ointment.
Tell me, we both matter, don’t we?
You anchored us deep under the Stygian saltwater
so for one fleeting moment I could feel time wait for us.
Drawn up before the dusky hour of our death
we were yearning, breathless, glass-eyed fools,
tangled together until there was no me or you left,
no we or us. Our hands will never be cleaned. So
Tell me, we both matter, don’t we?
(Brief) notes for criticism: I have been working and editing this poem for two years now and I still feel like there is something missing with it. This is a bop poem, so its structure is 6/refrain/8/refrain/6/refrain and I would prefer to keep it within the ballpark of that structure, though if any criticism would require breaking the rules, I am open to it. Anything helps.
Posted Apr 25, 2022, 9:27 PM UTC
This is great. The imagery is very vivid and really captures the feel of a toxic or suffocating relationship. The spider and wasp metaphor was the strongest picture of this to me, and I’d think I’ll like to see that alluded to again in the rest of the poem, perhaps where they’re “entangled together”. That’s probably already an allusion to it but still, I imagine something more explicit at the end to tie back to the first stanza would make the poem more complete.