Three Poems by A. E. Stallings

Visiting a class on Zoom to talk about the “Nekyia” in the Odyssey, Book 11

for Rachel Hadas

A ghost among the ghosts who meet on Zoom,
I am the guide, and I must read the room,
Explaining the underworld to these fresh shades,
Unwedded youths and newly sorrowed maids.
A glass in hand, the sanguine hue of blood,
I hope my speaking will be understood,
Describing what in Hades may be seen,
Distanced and virtual, as on a screen:
First Elpenor, hazed frat boy, on a souse,
Who tumbled from the roof of Animal House,
And always someone’s mother’s sacrifice
Has ended here. You’ll try to hug her thrice.
Here’s Agamemnon, phantom who is haunted:
He did not get the welcome home he wanted.
And there’s Achilles, buried with such glory,
Who’d rather be alive without the story:
“Better to be a nobody, instead
Of somebody among the flimsy dead!”
He strides off beaming, though, in a long lope:
News of his son thriving above brings hope.
It’s time to log off now, as ghosts swarm thick
In sums confounding our arithmetic,
When last of all, the friend steps from the throng
We owe atonement for an ancient wrong,
That Ajax, frowning, hulking like a brute,
Whose huge resentment no one can unmute.

Doors

In the house of dysfunctional doors
Where no door hangs square on its hinges,
Slamming them settles no scores;
They open with whinges.

They grudge shut by scraping the floors
Or stand jeering, ajar,
In the house of dysfunctional doors,
Where our rooms and our corridors are.

The Blackbird

is like failure. It
starts to sing at 5:30
in the morning. I

have been awake all
night, not writing, and I stop
to harken to it.

A. E. Stallings is a U.S.-born poet and translator living in Athens. Her most recent collection of poems, Like (FSG), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. An illustrated verse translation of the pseudo-Homeric Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice is available from Paul Dry Books. A Selected Poems is forthcoming from FSG and Carcanet.