Odysseus
—Erica Goss
Odysseus
A husband is not
a tree or a friend or a flower.
He is the horizon
under which a ship
has just vanished,
a direction and a prayer.
He is the cold intelligence
inside the damage,
the thunder that
sounds like guns.
Always coming home
to the wife who spends
her days building
and unbuilding
the stones around
her heart. Each day
the danger grows,
the predators emboldened.
She can’t hold them off much longer.
He arrives like warm rain.
Disappear into me, he says.
I am the east to your west.
Lust and trembling
work in her, his pleasure.
About
ERICA GOSS is the author of Night Court, winner of the 2017 Lyrebird Award from Glass Lyre Press. She has received numerous Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, as well as a 2023 Best American Essay Notable. Recent and upcoming publications include The Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Oregon Humanities, Creative Nonfiction, North Dakota Quarterly, Gargoyle, Spillway, West Trestle, A-Minor, Redactions, Consequence, The Sunlight Press, The Pedestal, San Pedro River Review, and Critical Read. Erica served as Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California, from 2013-2016. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, where she teaches, writes and edits the newsletter Sticks & Stones.