Clik here to view.
Uninitiated, and that part of the soul where the desires are
The madman spoke not, and met not the eyes of his fellows, feigning that he did not recognize the men at his door as he pushed through the crowd and hurried into his fields. He yoked an ox and an ass...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reason of a sort
Achilles had been living at Skyros so long he’d nearly forgot how to dance the spear-dance to the clanging of bronze shields, how to stamp his swift feet and leap and dart while all eyes were upon him...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Eyes roamed about alone with no foreheads
“Your eyes are open,” the silver-tongued grandson of Autolykos said to the wife of Agamemnon. “And you see them, those strong men, brave men who have fought at your husband’s side and earned his trust...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Yes
“I chose your name,” his grandfather once confided. “On my way to witness your birth, I ran into some people I once swindled – and, well, it didn’t end pretty. I barely escaped with my life. Most of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Effluence of forms in agreement with vision
Yellow-haired Achilles sat brooding in his tent, perched on a three-legged camp stool like one about to undergo Korybantic rites. His eyes were red from grief and barely-contained frenzy. Each part of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Safest to weave together both opinions
Telamonian Ajax, covered in gore and eyes rolling back in his head, swung the double-headed axe and smote the placid cow in the midst of munching grass, opening a trench in its throat from which poured...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Are exhalations from all things
“How indeed,” Telamonian Ajax sneered, “Do you propose that Achilles’ arms and armor should go to you? The whole camp heard the voice of his mother proclaiming, ‘to the bravest.’ You’ve a way with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bibliomania
I’ve updated my list of books, adding notices next to the ones I hope to have out by April. Question, O faithful readers of mine; should I wait and release them all at once or stagger them to make it...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Each other, both in their origin and in their mixing
“Were Achilles here, he’d say it. Instead it falls to me to reveal the truth to them,” the fatherless dwarf Thersites roared, bow-legged, pigeon-chested, a sight to see with more hair coming out of his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Remaining within, and others had gone outside
Philoctetes watched his thigh go from pink to streaky red, gangrenous green and then black; the wound wept ceaselessly, milky white pus and blood that stank of rot. Before he grew too weak, he would...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Open to persuasion and moves upward and downward
Everyone else has been asleep for a couple hours by this point, but I’m stretched out on the couch, resting my feet on the glass-topped end table, finishing off a bowl and reading some Borges I brought...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Thuraze Kêres, ouket’ Anthestêria!
Now that Anthesteria is officially over I’m going to resume working on Wine Dark, but I have to share something infuriating amusing first. Astute readers may have noticed that in this Bacchic Orphic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Parts of themselves—the beaming sun and earth and sky and sea
They say that Kadmos, dragon-slayer, when he saw his daughter’s womb swell with divine fruit, believed her not and locked her away in a tower with only a loom to pass the hours. She wove her coiled...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Excess of warmth in their nature
Odysseus spied the gleaming cliffs of his fatherland, and aye, his own palatial estate, with sweet, curvy-hipped Penelope dutifully waiting inside for him! His vineyards, his swineherd, his hunting...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Names of Delight, and Aphrodite
“Don’t try and pretend,” Lamos of the Laistrygones sneered. “Your eyes are open and you see them.” Odysseus forced himself to meet the Giant’s withering gaze, and somehow kept his nerves in check and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
And those without intelligence he called
Odysseus stood at the fence, watching sadly as the fat pigs wallowed in the mire. Once they had been Warriors, the best that Ithaka had sent to die in Asia and yet somehow, through all the battles and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Neither is any part of this all empty
This is how Circe told Odysseus to go to hell: “Yonder past the far Western shore, sail your white-masted trireme, until you reach a narrow strand and the groves of Persephone, full of tall black...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Desired by each other
The shadowy chorus of walking dead parted, goaded back by the iron blade unshakeningly held in Odysseus’ firm hand – all but one. Smoke rose off him, and his flesh bubbled and dripped as the Prophet...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clik here to view.
On all sides, and whatever is immortal
Gathered round him were the host who’d fallen at Troy, valiant men from both sides who’d met night-dark Ker far too soon. And among them stood a man, holding a trunk of white cypress for a club,...
View Article