ORPHEUS ADMITS DEFEAT OF UNDERWORLD RESCUE
Eva Heisler | Poetry
That’s the headline in Express Mirror.
“It was her time,” murmurs the grieving husband
beneath the blur of flailing arms.
Tabloids blow in from the upperworld,
and Eurydice studies each image said to record
the last of her, each instance of the phrase “her time.”
Time. Hers.
Orpheus didn’t save her—
not because he failed to follow directions,
not because he had to do things his way,
not because he thought he was above laws of the underworld.
Orpheus couldn’t save her because it was “her time.”
Orpheus looked,
and she took, at that moment, possession of time.
Eva Heisler has published two books of poetry: Reading Emily Dickinson in Icelandic (Kore Press) and Drawing Water (Noctuary Press). Honors include the Poetry Society of America’s Emily Dickinson Award and fellowships at MacDowell and Millay Arts. Poems have recently appeared in Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Los Angeles Review, and Seneca Review. She was co-winner of the 2021 Poetry International Prize and, most recently, Smartish Pace awarded her the 2023 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize.