Aphrodite’s Snare (Odyssey, 8. 266-366)

Over a fine meshed coverlet of purple wool, the shimmering chain that they can’t see entraps them in a finery of bright Olympian loins: the slim warm pectorals against her skin, the web work of their coupled thighs, and then the netting snare from the high canopy. The slender links fall, fretting her breasts, pendulous like moons miraged and mussed in summer ponds lapping their faint edges in the fields, the swelling bed stunned by their furtive weight. A motion here, a motion there, the net has got them now, a sieve through which the watchers peer to see each secretfroth and fume rise from that creviced sea, the drops of telltale sweat under the pliant fetter-lock. Soon the gods gather, shameless, all of them, always crowding where there are traps, especially the golden ones, where words can no longer catch anything of the prize before them, rapt in reflections of their own, only to flee to islands, to dark northern suns burning beneath the constantly plowed fields.

Askold Skalsky

Askold Skalsky’s poetry has been appeared in numerous small press magazines, most recently in Southern Poetry Review and Notre Dame Review. He has also published in Canada, Ireland, and Great Britain. Originally from Ukraine, he teaches English at a community college in Western Maryland.