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In order to view the poem as the author intended it to appear, we strongly encourage you to click on this link (which will take you to a PDF): Alice and Sisyphus

Alice and Sisyphus
Ann Lauinger

The
cat mouses
her ball, pounces,
jabs, and dispatches
it to the hereafter (under
the bed). Our job is to fetch
the ball back in the open so she
can lesson it again with mighty blows,
send it to the Land of the Shades, emerging
once more to act that myth we think we know.
We keep on fetching, while she keeps dispatching,
even though we get tired of the game before she does,
since we’ve read about Sisyphus and she hasn’t. Yet she won’t
give up trying to teach us what we ought to know. So once again she
retrieves her mortal story and drops it at our feet with a green-eyed stare.
Not meaning, you must begin it all again. Meaning, you can begin it all again.

—
Ann Lauinger has published two books of poetry: Persuasions of Fall (University of Utah Press), which won the Agha Shahid Ali Prize, and Against Butterflies (Little Red Tree Publishing). Her poems have appeared in journal such as The Cumberland River Review, Descant, Georgie Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Parnassus, and Salamander; in several anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature; and on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. She is a member of the Slapering Hol Press Advisory Committee and until recently taught medieval and Renaissance literature at Sarah Lawrence College.

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