Eos

Dakota Honey

Can you feel my heart
Beating like a hammer
On the bars of my cage?
Or is it the feathers
Ruffling your hair
In the spaces between?

Homer called me rose-fingered,
As in the color but also
Euphemistically,
To say I know my way
Around the petals.

Sun gods in my wake,
I ride, Apollo and
Helios in their daily ritual,
Showing off while I am…

Eternally crepuscular.
Forever in lust.
Cast in dewy saffron

It drips from my fingers,
The rosy ones, holding this truth:

The villains are always love.

It’s why they curse us
And lock us in cages

Or they cast us out.
Doom us to repeating
Our mistakes, the best ones.

The ones they wish they made themselves.
The delicious, gentle sins
The ones they won’t indulge
No matter gravity’s pull.

Like the Morning Star,
My sin is the envy of

Another heavenly body;
Aphrodite curses
The joyful part of me.

So I’ll use the hammer
To beat a new song
Not found in her philosophy;
The cage is my instrument.
I’ll find rhythm in the petals
And rejoice in their lush dawn.

Interview by C. VanWinkle
September 22, 2025

What was the prompt that you responded to? Can you describe it for me?

It was a collage of a super-beautiful person with wings. They were in a golden cage, perched on some kind of suspended something-or-another, looking off to the side. They had a slutty a little mustache and there were giant tears coming out of one of their eyes.

First, I thought, “Wow, this person's cute!” Then I started taking in the surroundings; the cage really stood out to me. It took me a while to notice the teardrops. Something about the person's position reminded me of some kind of Greek sculpture. The pose felt like something that would be on the side of some ancient building, but the colors were all super vibrant. The wings were angel-shaped wings, but the feathers were very parroty in color. It was an interesting juxtaposition.

I think I was still at work when I got the photo, so I kind of looked at it for a minute and then went back to my business. I was thinking about it and how I wanted to respond.

So what led you to the response you made? What was that journey like?

When I leave work, I go in a number of different directions, depending on where I'm going after work. In one of the directions that I go, I pass this metal sculpture of Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn. She's pointing west, so sometimes when I'm leaving, I can see the sun setting as I'm pulling up behind her. I was doing that and then it just kind of popped into my head. “This reminds me of that artwork.” Something about the two of them just connected in my brain. And then I got stuck on that track. “Okay, I'm writing a poem about Eos, I guess.”

You’d seen that sculpture a number of times. Were you already familiar with Eos?

I don't know if I knew Eos specifically by name when I started working here, but I was very drawn to the sculpture the first time I saw it. It’s called “Eos” by Dessa Kirk. I read about the piece and more about Eos herself. She’s mentioned in the Odyssey and several other places, but she's not one of the more famous goddesses. When I was working on the poem, I read a little bit more about her to refresh and give myself ideas. So it was a little bit of foreknowledge and some new things that I added in.

I was wondering about that! I thought, “Wow, this person really knows their mythology!”

After the initial inspiration, I wrote some of the poem, or some draft of it, and then I definitely went back to read more. For instance, the line “Homer called me rose-fingered,” which was specifically from The Odyssey. I didn't remember that part off the top of my head. I went back and reread that section, and that line snagged me, so I incorporated it. When I’m writing anything, research really helps inspire me. I get better at writing the more I read. I don't think it's even so much a craft thing; the more information I have about a subject, the more ideas I have.

How does this piece relate to the rest of your work?

Well, [chuckles] immediately I feel like – I think you said it much more prettily than this – it's just kind of really horny. [laughs harder] With most things that I write, there's a level of eroticism. That's where I live my life and what inspires me, so it's related to that. Also, this poem feels a little bit sad, and I think that comes from the inspiration. It was Eos by way of this collage, which does feel a little sad, caged, trapped. I think I write about that a lot too. Not physically being trapped, but a lot of my work is about feeling trapped or maybe constrained by societal norms, or expectations, or the hyper-masculine, heteronormative, monosexual hegemony of society.

I hear that! Masculinity is a prison, after all. So let's see, had you worked from prompts before? Is that part of your practice?

Yeah, it's way easier for me to get started on something if I have a prompt, so I loved it. This experience is perfect for me. Often, when I sit down but don't have any ideas and am just going to free write, that's so hard for me. It eventually turns into, “What am I listening to right now? What can I pull out of this song?” That also happened with this poem. It helps get me started. And often, whatever that is doesn't even stay in the final piece. It just gives me a springboard and helps me get going and get ideas out. Then I refine.

That’s really cool. Can you tell me more about how you use music in your process?

I do a lot of found poetry, which is pulling lines from other places and mashing them together. I do that a lot with music. I make a lot of playlists and sometimes I'll write a whole poem that is modeled after a playlist. I take one line from each song and make it into a poem. That's one of my favorite ways to work with music. I typically start with the playlist, and I listen to it over and over again. I pick my favorite lines, and then maybe pick my next favorites if the first ones don't fit together the way I want them to. I have a lot of religious trauma, so I will also do that with verses from the Bible that pop into my mind or that I see somewhere.

The album I just happened to be listening to was Metric’s “Fantasies,” which is one of my favorite albums of all time. There's a line from the opening track: “Can you feel my heart beating like a hammer?” I worked that into the poem; I think it's the opening line. I listen to music all the time and it’s a big inspiration for me. Not musically, because I can't play anything, but lyrically. The lyrics are typically what inspire me.

I love that this poem is sort of a collage of pieces coming together. There’s some Metric and some Homer and whatever other stuff is floating around in your head.

Yeah, I'm glad it worked out! I also write short fiction along with poetry and that’s what most of my writing usually feels like. It's a collage; I think that's a really good word for my style.

It certainly sounds like it! Now that you're at this point in our process, what's your advice to another creator just getting their prompt today?

I think the advice I got was really good. The setup of this whole thing works really well. If I had had more than two weeks, I would have never finished. I would have just kept tweaking and changing things. The way that I did it worked really well for me and could potentially work really well for someone else. Just sit with it for a minute or a day or two days or something, and then start throwing stuff at a page, or canvas or whatever it is, and see what holds and what fits together.

I totally agree. Waiting until you’re “ready” is a trap that way too many of us have fallen into.

I need to get something out or I’ll never figure out what this is.

Call Number: G123VA | G124PP.hoEo

Dakota Honey is a full-time librarian, part-time poet in South-Central Indiana. They are continually inspired by music, mythology, and the mythical creatures surrounding them. You can find them in a library, a movie theater, or dancing at the local queer bar.