longing for sappho / Myrrhine

Two poems by Hebe Kearney

longing for sappho

three thousand year ago you swore

you could cut the night with your teeth.

gnashing like a triumphant warrior

song bleeding through your parted lips.

you swore you could not

touch the sky with two arms,

but with only one

you hold gossamer threads

of love magic, centuries after.

yours was a dual mind

cleft and divided;

loving and letting go,

all the flowers fell

in pretty rings round your riven head.

holding out hope

we would remember you,

a little golden pride

under an acidic greek sky

you sung fragile echoes

for us to cup in desperate hands.

three thousand years later

the smell of it like violets and warm

like roses, primary colours

in the crease of your clavicle

around your jeweled throat.

you didn’t make it for us

all the same

we triangulating your longing

purple through priamel

ringing clear as cool water

like the bubbling of your voice

sticky as honey

not as sweet,

it helps that these days

you are bigger and smaller

than you ever were.

just a shade now

a synesthetic memory

of songs we will never hear.

Myrrhine

you took ripe apples up the hill

reigned down

their sticky juices,

teasing.

you took

athens out below the belt

whipping away desire.

your hands,

deftly crafted loom sitter,

thumbed the threads of peace

until you boldly made it

from absence; none

of your simple soft and perfumed fleshed

belonged to anyone but you,

who held the threadbare akropolis for ransom

all those thirsty days.

myrrhine

you took the apples up the hill

under the monumental pediments

ate every single one.