SELF PORTRAIT AS MINOTAUR by Kiyoko Reidy
Years between these long
thin rooms. Life
of corridors, doorway
to a doorway. Along
one wall: onions line
a shelf, white bulbs
bright as bone in the cool
dark. Potatoes
heaped like golden
fists. Beneath the jaw’s
cusp: no rhythm. Denied
even the body’s
metronome. Here,
nothing rots:
root-home, wine-
keep. Always the bitter
edge of arrival, the mind’s
talent for suspension.
From above: whorl of these
walls, print of God’s
own massive finger, swirl
of his eye—and its center: me,
the pupil, black chasm,
lightless hallway.
This stagnancy: its own kind
of decay. I am the tunnel
into the mountain. I am more
beast every day.
- Published in Issue 23