A/N: I wrote this as a spoken word poem for an English project, centered around The Odyssey, as Homer recited his work “back in the day.” This is told in the perspective of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus. The first stanza was a little parody of how the actual epic begins.
Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that woman, stranded for years on end;
the stoic, skilled in all ways of tarry,
after she bid farewell to her husband.
My name is Penelope,
the indispensable. I
am a woman, but not
one expendable; like the
last letter of my title - I am
that ‘e’ that refuses
to be silenced.
In the morning, I weave together
the twisted words of those
men who tether their incentives
of greed to our home.
While you are away,
weathering the monsters
of politics and war,
I, myself, fight perversion
five steps from our
bedroom door.
At night, when Helios
abandons his flight,
I unthread the deadline
that reads forfeit, the
cutoff date for your
never return. When
the needle slips, the drops
of red that fall from my fingers
remind me I am alive.
The clock is ticking,
Odysseus, and the void
in our son deepens
with each morning chariot
ride across the sky.
Life is not
as the saying goes -
all is not fair in love
and war.
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