PENELOPE
Joseph Fasano
They say you can save
your own life with what you make.
They say this, Telemachus.
Each night
I take the loom apart
in darkness, but not
because I need him
in these gardens—only
because I know now
what the doomed know:
we are only as sacred as what unmakes us.
Say his name
when you go to bed, Telemachus.
Then leave me, let me
say this to your father:
Child—you are
a child, aren’t you—
I walk now
by these dark and hardened waters
and I pity you
the last days of your voyage.
For surely
you have long ago discovered it,
long ago
though the wind lives
to afflict you, long ago
though the dark
is every harbor, long ago
though you’ve broken
far from home.
Listen. Listen. Listen:
there are the wild things
the sirens sing
to take us
and the burning things
the Circes dream
to keep us
and the little hymn
the living live
with the living
where to go to what you are is not to go.
Joseph Fasano is a poet, novelist, and songwriter. His novels include The Swallows of Lunetto (forthcoming from Maudlin House, 2022) and The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020), which was named one of the "20 Best Small Press Books of 2020." His books of poetry include The Crossing (2018), Vincent (2015), Inheritance (2014), and Fugue for Other Hands (2013). His honors include The Cider Press Review Book Award, the Rattle Poetry Prize,, inclusion in the Forward Book of Poetry, and a nomination for the Poets' Prize, "awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year." His writing has been translated into Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Spanish, Chinese, Swedish, and other languages. He serves on the Editorial Board of Alice James Books and as the Founder and Curator of the Poem for You Series. He is currently writing a "living poem" for his son and posting it on Twitter at @stars_poem.