Not to be outdone by anyone, the
daughter finds and kills the Cyclops.
She breaks Calypso’s heart. The saving
shawl of the sea-nymph Ino. Nightfall.
Her parents send her the newspaper
clippings. They talk on the phone
once or twice a week. What are you
having for dinner? Eventually she will
build everything into a play. It will
climax in a small town in Kansas,
where a loyal swineherd will serve her
tea. Tennyson, too, will have a role
as will Homer and Joyce. Each one
plays a Siren whose job is to fling their
round breasts to the ground like a red
velvet curtain. “How dull it is to
pause, to make an end,” they say as
she lashes their bodies with the stage
floor. “The moral” says the daughter
“is the end is always a lie.”