Helen in Underworld
by Catherynne M. Valente
It was in Egypt. I found them
in Egypt:
little oily seeds.
iridescent, almost,
like hummingbird pupils.
There was sand in your eyebrows
when you gave them to me,
sand in the creases of
apothecary-palms.
Your eyes were full of mercury
and gypsum,
overflowing with bryony and
hellebore.
I thought the venom-glut meant
you were to be trusted.
You promised to make of me
a cloud-Helen,
a creature of vapor and
moonlight.
You promised that roses would
detonate in my brain,
that my heart would crack
and its ventricles would
overflow
with olives and goatsblood.
You promised that oblivion
would strangle me with ringed
hands.
You promised me I would
remember nothing.
I took it back to my husband,
mashed the seeds with a pestle
of bone.
The sludge was so black,
like the innards of
butterflies.
It was easy to fold it into
honeyed dough,
easy to smile and smile
while I crawled about his
errands
on my knees, on my hands,
still boat-shackled
as though it all happened
yesterday
and we two still sea-tossed—
no more than I deserved, he
sneered.
Easy to lie on my pillows
while he gobbled up the sweets,
crumbs catching in the
sheep-wool of his barrel-chest,
licking the sugar-seeds off of
his beard
with a slavering tongue.
The taste of them, smeared into
Stygian icing,
was of mouse-spleens
and burnt apples soaked in
wine.
I pressed it to the roof of my
mouth with my tongue.
I waited for the darkness,
I waited for the wind-torn
towers
to melt in me and dribble
out of my mouth like scorched
fruit.
He crawled to me on his knees,
pawing my thighs, growling that
I owed him,
I owed him,
I owed him,
and if I had whored my
swan-born body
to the leopard-slaying prince,
there was nothing I could
refuse.
My jaw shattered in his fist,
my beak-golden hair tore from
my scalp.
He dragged my ship-launching
face
down into the depths of his
beard,
and I was not a cloud,
I was not vapor,
I was meat and bile and his
lips
were stealing my breath
and the city flamed behind me;
I could feel the heat of it
still.
He broke the kitchen table when
he collapsed,
insensate, honey drooling from
his mouth.
Blood bloomed in me,
a secret door,
flesh-fluttering,
and I fell into it,
I fell so far,
eager for your promised ease,
eager to forget the smell of
Creusa burning,
her hair sizzling into
baldness,
her fingernails boiling—
I wanted to forget that
spattering perfume,
forget the boy-prince and his
zealous kisses,
forget her endless keening,
like a heifer slaughtered for
my hecatomb.
You promised me. Sand-browed
apothecary,
with your cabinet of poisons.
You promised the shades
would stop crowding me,
would stop worming their mouths
into me
to warm themselves in my blood—
but they were there,
waiting at the bottom
of the well of my womb,
and I fell into their arms,
whimpering, begging nonsense
vowels.
They opened my belly as though
unfolding a blanket
over an amputee on that lonely,
mussel-strewn beach—
and pulled out their dresses
left on the altars—
blue and violet and green,
spangled and ivory-buttoned,
veils and furs and ribbons.
They pulled from me the hollow
horse,
the sleek black ships;
they pulled from me the eggs of
my birth,
the ash-spear cock of Ajax,
and fire,
endless buckets of fire,
passed from ghost to ghost like
well-water.
They dragged Ilium from my body
entire,
towers and gates and plumed
helmets,
and I whispered that I was a
bird, a cloud,
I had nothing but wings and air
to my name,
and they could not accuse me
as though I were a woman.
But they would not listen,
they would not see the feathers
I showed them,
they would not see my ruined
cradle-egg.
They dug into me over and over
and pulled out their own faces,
coins blazing in their eyes.
I clutched at my belly, my
swan-belly,
my vapor-belly:
it threw back the black paste
onto my husband’s feet.
You lied, You lied,
with sand in your mouth, you
lied to me.
The cloud-Troy
still floats in me like a
cancer,
sending its flames into the
slough of asphodels
that line the curve of my
skull.
It is still there, still there,
so pale, and so bright,
and I will take the mercury
next,
if you will sell it to me,
and the gypsum, and the bryony,
and the hellebore,
I have
enough, more than enough
to pay
for these.
Put your quicksilver under my
tongue.
I do
not mind the taste.
Make me not-Helen. Tell me
I have been here, in Egypt all
along,
and I did not hear Cassandra’s
wrist break
on the altar steps.
About the Author:
Catherynne M. Valente is the author of the
forthcoming Orphan's Tales series, as well as The Labyrinth,
Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams, The Grass-Cutting Sword,
and three books of poetry, Apocrypha, The Descent of Inanna, and
Oracles. She lives in Virginia with her husband
and two dogs.
Poem © 2006 Catherynne M. Valente.
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