Skylla

Seamen told — and the tale has been preserved in the Odyssey ... — that there are two cliffs, one of them of smooth stone and so high that it rises to heaven, and its summit is invisible. In the middle of this cliff is the cave of Skylla. The cave faces toward the west, towards the impenetrable darkness of Erebos. ...

... We must recognize in Skylla a great goddess resembling her mother Hekate. Probably the accounts of Skylla that are the truest to her real nature are those that depict her in the shape of a beautiful woman down to the hips, but changing at the hips to a dog and from the hips downward into a fish. Those accounts that speak of her also having wings are equally true to her nature, in that, unlike ((her sister)) Charbydis ((who dwelt under the other cliff)), she rules not only over the depths, but also over the far distances both below and above.

-- Carl Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks

I found her when I was 17
— late, compared to my
randy peers — in a 19th-
story apartment of a Lake
Shore highrise. Her parents
had by then just let
her be in glum resignation,
their attempts to bring
her to their adulthood
stillborn in the
rages of a premature
motherhood.
Her father didn’t smile
when he opened the
door, just waved
me down the hall
toward her room.
My guitar case felt
heavy in my hand
as I swung it down
the hall, the maguffin
which barely concealed
a rude penis sprouting
up. My excuse for calling
on her that Friday night
was that we were to
make some music
together, but it
was obviously the
father wasn’t buying
that. His coldness was
strange to me, for
I had always been able
to sweet-talk parents,
good gold boy I
was by all appearances;
but I guess Skylla
had so pissed them off
that every caller
was damaged goods
to them. Just knocking
on the door was
a complicit, guilty
sound. Nor was I
fooling myself that night.
I said thank
You to the father
and headed back,
passing the mother
who sat stonily in
their expensive
living room, her
eyes staring out
the window on
the black film
of Lake Michigan.
At the other
end of that I knocked;
Come in a rich
soft voice intoned;
and did. Skylla sat on
her bed with a classical
guitar, picking with
some skill a Joni Mitchell
tune from “Blue” -- her
song a dark wound’s
sweet cave
between love
and hell. She was a
year older than I,
redbrown hair thick
and wavy falling past
her shoulders, a long
sharp nose punctuating
something feral
between those deep,
doe-soft eyes -- a
dangerous fragility
which stirred from
awful depths to smile
sweetly and sigh
come sit down ...
I did. She held
that guitar close
against heavy breasts
which swung
freely beneath a
peasant blouse.
Oh my heart was
pounding with the
knowledge that I
was finally going
to get to lose my
long-mocked and
useless virginity—
a strange heaving
in my chest, tiding
in and out thick
washes of hot blood.
Some days earlier
on a cig break from
our church youth
group we had stood
outside in the
city’s sharp-edged
cold; she had
just finished saying
that she will never
get the ways of
men -- she’d been
dumped again--
when I blurted
I was still virgin.
Skylla ground out her
cigarette with
her shoe; when
she looked
up she saw
something
clear through
me from the
deep waters of
her eyes: And
whispered, well,
we’ll have to do
something about
that, won’t we
— matter-of-factly,
offering me the
next spot in
the bad male queue
outside and through
her high-rise room.
Yes, I was ready
to join them,
desperate to shed
my boy’s innocence
& stand nude before
her naked world,
a man of darker
purposes revealed
to revel lavishly
at last ...
Her room was
warm and dark,
curtains pulled
tight against the
city night -- perhaps
to deny the height
of privilege, or
in fear of fates
and faces in
the jeweled city
lights, or worse,
from the flat black
visage of Lake
Michigan spreading
ever to the east.
Candles around
the room tongued
a soft low glow.
“Take off your shoes,”
she whispered; her
fish tail seemed
to flinch as I
heaved off my
boots, her
eyes watching
my first undress
with what seemed
to me a savage
red sadness, most
sexual yet not,
like a woman
long fallen from
all discreeter
interpretations. My
Christian talk
meant nothing to her,
having been raised
a smart Jewish
humanist, now
grown agnostic of
the men she embraced,
her God wide and deep
in the ways heaven
could not say by
any light of day.
By then it didn’t
mean much to me
either, having lost
the God of words,
my sights set on
lower epiphanies,
surer anointings.
I pulled my Epiphone
12-string from its
plush blue bed and
began to play those
Christian songs we
knew from youth
group -- “Sing My
People,” “Blind Man,”
“Resurrection”; then
played a few of
my own songs
about hopeless
love and salvation;
then she played
a few of her own,
songs which made
mine sound naive
& stupid & inarticulate,
which I was. She
had been taught
to play & compose
by the father of the
child she was forced
to give away when
she was just 16 --
she kept that
master’s touch inside
her own, her thin
pale fingers picking
deep notes out,
her voice sorrowful
and true, rich
as any whiskey
I would later come
to know. Finishing
a third song she
laid that guitar
aside and poured
us wine; as
we drank she
talked of him,
her lost son,
perfect pink
and nursing at
her perfect breast
for one day only,
before they took
that son away.
Her parents just
would not stand
to have their only
child end her
future as a
unwed teenaged
mother. They
moved soon after
from Minneapolis
to Chicago where
they told her
to start her life
over. That’s when
the war began,
two years of
schools at which
she failed despite
her brilliance,
using her vagina
to break her
parents’ will
taking on boy
after boy after
boy, consuming
their fast semen
with a horrid
sort of joy. By now
they had settled into
a warlike stalemate
where she went to
school and paid her
dues but when at
home she had full
rights to her room,
inviting whoever
she cared to
to do with them
as she pleased.
No wonder they
hated me, but
did I care that night?
She drained her
glass and then
smiled low at
me in that
low-burning room;
then whispered
come here love
and I did,
like a lamb to
virgin slaughter.
We kissed: we
worked each
others clothes
off: and I reeled
at the sight at last,
she laying there along
my length, her breasts
thick and wobbly
in my hand, a wide
scar across her
belly from the
C-section like
a pumpkin’s mouth,
the thatch of
thick brown
pubic hair
which ground
against my pubic
bone like seaweed
long onshore.
My fingers roamed
from breasts to
belly to cunt to thighs
and back, tracing
a territory that
seemed familiar
yet so strange,
a wilderness of
womanhood I
could not name
though my hand
seemed fluent
in the touch.
She tried to fondle
me erect but
I was too scared,
I guess, too
unaccustomed to
the feel of soft
on rough, the
sense of waters
loosened from
a dam that would
not ever heal
back; my cock
flopped loose
like a beached
and dying fish inside
her hand as she tried
a long time -- two hours,
probably -- to rouse
the devil. Alas, I
was in a stalemate
too, with my own
body, screaming with
all my will from
the outside at
some motlen
steel within
which refused
to temper a
rude girder.
Some time after
midnight we just
gave and lay there,
kissed-out, half
sleeping, complete
in every way the sin
except in the raw deed,
Skylla my wet mentor
looking distantly through
me with those eyes
which trailed seaweed
deep down into the
soft long pubic hairs
my fingers rested on,
down to the sand
between my teeth
and balls and toes,
down into that
black sea sighing
underneath the
phallic tower I
had climbed, with
some church bell
tolling far way,
a distant buoy
I hardly recognized
any more. Oh sweet
initiator to the
wide and deepest
realms to tide me
far from heaven’s
bourne: What a
bittersweet conclusion
to the way I formally
began to name
my Beloved with my body,
far from the pond
I dreamt she fell
into. Plunge and
capture, fuck and
run: Sweet breasts
in the caves’s entrance
and rude fish smells
far inside, back
in the deep ends of
the night: Thank
You for that first
encounter where
by failing I learned
to fuck by falling
into every failed
reach and breech
sex delves but
can’t deliver.
Oh so late that
night I wearied my
way home, carrying
my guitar in one
hand and the ghost
of a breast in the
other, my knees
rubbed raw & my
soft dick smarting
in ways which would
holler rude and rampant
soon enough, soon
enough: That sensation
of abrasion from an
Other hung high above
me as I waited for
the subway in some
deep dank empty
somewhat dangerous
El station, loud
and lost as all 2 a.m.’s
came to be ... Was
I still a virgin? Could
I still find my way
back to a boy-child’s God?
No: and as I rode
the subway home
in a clatter of half-sleep,
I thought back on
Skylla’s breasts and
cunt and ass as
the car heaved and
sparked; of
that rude scar
of birth like
a scowl; of her eyes
so deep through me
like a book that
closed as it opened,
lurching me from
one life to a next
that seemed wild
and beautiful at
once. Skylla wrapped
around that car
ensuring I’d never
find my way to
that old home again,
not on any street,
nor in any guitar,
not in loving or
digressing here
all the waters at her
rear: Never home
but always near, a
sighing ominipresence
which fades fast
from any view -- I
never went back
to Skylla’s room
& she never returned
to our youth group—
yet always returning
too, in the next woman
who took me to bed
and roused me at last
to give up the ancient
ghost. She’s in
the garden outside
at 5 a.m. in
today late late
summer sere wan heat,
fading like a lover’s
breath from sex
on down darkest sleep.
Skylla rules this hand
from a deep and
crashing land, calling
and refusing me,
demanding that I
measure out the
broadest, deepest,
darkest sea, line
by line, song by song,
that her nursed-
on nipples at full
length be told,
a milky taut
derangement that
I learned from a
girl-woman in
a highrise room
now 30 years ago,
so large and stiff
and brown, slightly
chewed by all
the ghosts, still
proudly proffered
unto me to feed
that long-starved
child offered to
her when I became
a man’s pent seed
giving birth to
the waylaid life.