poem

by Matthew Zhao

A Myth of Permanence

after Louise Glück

This time, Orpheus doesn’t turn around.

He keeps walking along, singing his song

to fool the gods, eyes on the path

he chose for himself.

Eurydice is awfully calm.

Only when they get home, take off their shoes,

crawl into bed, she says,

You haven’t saved me—

you’ve only saved yourself.

He doesn’t get it, only hoping for the

morning, for the sunbeams to string his lyre

so can play the same tune from their wedding.

He imagines the rest of their lives together,

but in her version, it’s Orpheus who dies,

and Eurydice watches him vanish instead.

---

Matthew Zhao is a poet from Michigan, now a PhD student at Florida State University. He was a finalist in the National Poetry Series and Mississippi Review Prize, and a semifinalist in the Word Works Washington Prize, Longleaf Press Book Prize, Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, and Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. His poems appear or are forthcoming in swamp pink, Four Way Review, Frontier Poetry, Summerset Review, Indianapolis Review, Shade Journal, Ibbetson Street, BoomerLitMag, PRISM International, Diode Poetry Journal, Pinch, and others.