ODYSSEY
The package heralds its arrival with a text.
I open my door to find a cardboard box tattooed with numbers
and a barcode, corner accordioned by a fall.
I drag the box inside, deadbolt the door, worry the corner
with a finger until it tears. Pull out a polystyrene chip.
Bite without breaking it with my incisors.
lying on the courtyard stones in the sun.
She fights to all fours and limps inside, sniffs
four corners of the trespasser in search of a traveller
not yet returned.
I study it. Decide fate delayed is fate delivered
and attack it—
and the box surrenders another box.
This cube is made of maple taken from a tree
wilder than tame specimens I have climbed.
I lift it clear. Feel its weight. Place it on a clean patch
of floor.
warm as a woman when I hold it, hard as love
when I take a knife to it.
I make myself a mug of tea.
Sit, then doze, then dream of the face that is
I ask her, ‘What is the time?’ She makes no reply.
Points to a blood moon that has climbed
to its fortress in the tower of the sky
to hold the sun at bay. ‘Is it that early?’
She shakes her head.
Then I smell, then see, then hold the dark soil
of fate—and know it is not that early.
I open my door to find a cardboard box tattooed with numbers
and a barcode, corner accordioned by a fall.
I drag the box inside, deadbolt the door, worry the corner
with a finger until it tears. Pull out a polystyrene chip.
Bite without breaking it with my incisors.
Think of Cheetos:
spit the chip onto the carpet. That rouses Argos, lying on the courtyard stones in the sun.
She fights to all fours and limps inside, sniffs
four corners of the trespasser in search of a traveller
not yet returned.
‘Out,’ I command, and Argos
shuffles off into the stanzas of another poem. I study it. Decide fate delayed is fate delivered
and attack it—
starting at the ruptured corner—
until a mess of polystyrene spills across the carpet and the box surrenders another box.
This cube is made of maple taken from a tree
wilder than tame specimens I have climbed.
I lift it clear. Feel its weight. Place it on a clean patch
of floor.
It is a perfect cube:
a conundrum without seams. Hollow when I knock it, warm as a woman when I hold it, hard as love
when I take a knife to it.
I cannot unlock it.
I make myself a mug of tea.
Sit, then doze, then dream of the face that is
my intermission before eternity
until woken by the silver lips of fair Selene. I ask her, ‘What is the time?’ She makes no reply.
Points to a blood moon that has climbed
to its fortress in the tower of the sky
to hold the sun at bay. ‘Is it that early?’
She shakes her head.
Confused, I stand
and the cube opens like a broken fist. Then I smell, then see, then hold the dark soil
of fate—and know it is not that early.
It is that late.
Joel Deane is a poet, novelist, journalist and speechwriter. His most recent poetry collection is Year of the Wasp (2016).