Tea with Sisyphus, by Denise Keenaghan

Sisyphus, by Titian (Italy) 1548

Tea with Sisyphus
 
Sisyphus and I had tea one gray morning 
at the bottom of his hill.
 
he liked the low tang of black bergamot.
(I preferred the bounce and blast of green mint.)
 
he wore little but a business casual chiton
and a bent smile.
 
his skin stretched over his barge-blown shoulders
like a canvas of sails
fleshed out by ice scudding on wind.
 
he placed his boulder in the cradle 
between collar and blade,
that space thrumming with sweat and breath.
 
not one muscle blenched
when he picked up his sandwich 
and teacup
with one free smooth red-brown hand.
 
peculiar--
how he would not put that rock down in the sand,
and how that bent smile siphoned 
a threnody of tea-flushed moans.
 
funny--
we both chewed cleanly round the crust,
but he guzzled the meat--
and left behind
(at the bottom of that hill)
his sandwich bones.

Denise Keenaghan

Denise Keenaghan is an English Literature teacher and poet originally from Austin, but currently living in Houston, Texas. Her work has been published in the St. Edward’s University literary magazine, The Sorin Oak Review (formerly The Aesthetic Voice) and in the University of St. Thomas of Houston’s Laurels literary journal. She is the recipient of the St. Edward’s University Ellen Garwood Poetry Award as an undergraduate student. She completed her MLA in Literature, and her thesis was recommended for publication. She and her husband have raised three creative and artistic sons, and she is currently working on a poetry compilation dedicated to the power of the female synesthetic voice.