cw: sexual assault
Then the child of Zeus, Helen, decided she would mix the wine with drugs to take all pain and rage away, to bring forgetfulness of every evil.         
                                  – The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson

If I knew the difference
between entomology

and etymology, I’d know
my either; I’d know if you meant

meaning or just a clacking
of beetles, just a phalanx 

of carapace carried by 
a hundred legs as in centi 

or thousand as in milli, but my mind
is modest these days. Even 

modestly minded I know 
it’s no mistake that abduction 

shares a word with what 
penetrates me: rape. What do 

you know from one? Was she 
merely hogtied and dragged 

in a flaxen bag from all 
she ever knew or was she 

pressed face to the dirt and 
entered? Either way, they say 

rape. If you wonder what made 
this face, this curve of cheek, 

consider how the candlelight 
catches faint down where my jaw 

meets this elegance of neck. 
You must recall my mother 

was force fucked by a swan, 
and that’s our fate. Our citizenship

so tenuous, we even get taken
by the birds. You’ve heard how

we bury our children, how we watch 
war made with wooden horses, 

how we get dragged to hell because 
poor Hades needs a date, 

and as consolation they give us 
poppy powder for our wine. I say 

another dram of dream in mine. 
I am such a scholar for forgetting, 

such a student for letting go. I say 
set the table to a swarm of servants 

buzzing in the corners of this 
opulent palace. I say anoint 

the chalice to Menelaus who 
lets me be as shitfaced as I please 

until morning wipes the prior day 
clean, and I can try living again. 

Until then, I may hallucinate 
that the thousand launched ships 

never come back. Will you, 
my guest, drink to that?
Sonia Greenfield is the author of two full-length collections of poetry. Letdown, released in March, was selected for the 2020 Marie Alexander Series and published by White Pine Press. Her collection, Boy With a Halo at the Farmer's Market, won the 2014 Codhill Poetry Prize and was published in 2015. Her chapbook, American Parable, won the 2017 Autumn House Press chapbook prize. Her work has appeared in a variety of places, including in the 2018 and 2010 Best American Poetry. She lives with her husband, son, and Shiloh Shepherd in Minneapolis where she teaches at Normandale College and edits the Rise Up Review. More at soniagreenfield.com.
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