Eurydice Experiences Language Attrition in Hades and Eurydice Experiences Language Attrition in Hades (II) by Emily Paige Wilson
Poetry team lead Joseph Self on today’s poems: Of mythic Greek women poets are contractually obligated to write about at one point or another, Eurydice embodies a particular void. She is not so devoted as Penelope, nor as beautiful as Helen. Not vicious as Clytemnestra, cunning as Circe, or forlorn as Calypso. She is not the queen of death and spring. What she is, we do not know. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, she died the object of Orpheus’ love. Where Orpheus sings about 300 words to plead the gods for her life's full duration, Eurydice only says 1, “farewell”. And yes, “dying the second time… what had she to complain of—his great love?” (Lines 61-62, Tr. Brookes More), but what story is it where we know nothing of her other than that her ankle was soft, soft enough for the serpent's fangs. How perplexing then to finally meet Eurydice, to receive these poems like a bay laurel growing on the banks of the Styx, not alive nor reunited, but in Hades, alone. Does she know he’s coming for her? Does it matter, when the Lethe-like influence of the underworld saps and bleaches her, makes it a struggle to remember, to tell us, now that she has the opportunity. “There was a word… There was a word… a word… a word… a word…” (Wilson). What is light that’s not light? What is the gloss of grass? What shape takes unforgiveness? What turns a mind into wildflowers? What absence is ever itched? How will you know when you’re dead? Is it when you cease to know yourself or when you know yourself perfectly, outside of relations, outside love, but the language just doesn’t make sense
Eurydice Experiences Language Attrition in Hades
There was a word for light
that was not light. Harp strings, the sting
of wind registered through weeds.
Orpheus had a crown, but it was organic.
A halo, thick bristle. Golden brown.
Of course, it was not called a crown.
What was it named, the specific shade of silk
streamed over leaves? It was in the gloss of grass.
Roots. Stalk. The bud before the petals bloom.
There was a word for the slither, the hiss. The shape
of a body swift and unforgiving. Like deceit,
if an animal’s hunger could be deemed such.
There was also a word I was supposed to wear
on my body, a singular amulet of sound.
I often responded to it, when called.
Eurydice Experiences Language Attrition in Hades (II)
Metal teeth tucked into the pucker
of my hair when it needed to teeter
skyward. Adorned with shrapnel. Silver birds. Pearls.
A word that rhymed with weep.
A sweep of exhaustion. For hours,
its cradle of dark gauze rocking.
A word for when too much nectar turned
the mind into its own wildflower field: to be pulled
apart, petal by petal. Left fallow for the flies.
A word once for those large wooden vessels
used to escape. Used to invade.
They’d splinter the starved water into waves.
The absence of this word is an itch. Gray twitches,
swift silver flicks. A cold fame of infinite shapes.
Behind every body, it follows.
Neither regret nor remorse.
Not shame. Not reproach.
Not quite gilded lily, but close.
Emily Paige Wilson is the author of the young adult novel-in-verse Four Months Past Florence (Andrews McMeel, 2023) and the full-length poetry collection Jalubí (Unsolicited Press, 2022), in addition to two poetry chapbooks: Hypochondria, Least Powerful of the Greek Gods (Glass Poetry Press, 2020) and I’ll Build Us a Home (Finishing Line Press, 2018). She lives in Asheville, NC, where she works in higher education fundraising. You can find her on X here.
