The Minotaur Considered
by Amy Riddell

For him, words are distant stars that prick light into darkness.
He has no stars, nor any words with which to pierce silence

with reason. Like any infant, he wanted his mama, 
sucked hard on his fist but wanted her milk, wanted its warmth
to flood his mouth while she kissed each baby toe. He craved
the sight of her face smiling down at him, longed to feel himself
rocked in her arms, but no arms held him, only the straw mat

in the barn. Hunger makes him bellow. The ground shakes
and tiles crack and Cook’s fruit bowl crashes to the floor, but when
they lock him away, he can’t say maze or labyrinth,
can’t follow the sound of his voice to the name Daedalus.
His hunger aches, a dim longing for the body he came from:
the thrum of her heartbeat and beyond that her voice, the lilt
of it threading language to his ear. He understands so little,

is all blood and guts and afternoon naps, is all growls in his sleep.
The torn throats of his victims stain his hands, but he has never wept.
Among the bones of those he has eaten, he chews his cud but can gnaw
no light into the thing that he is. To name what he is, what the gods
made remorseless and uncomprehending, beyond redemption or love.

Amy Riddell is an assistant professor of English at Northwest Florida State College in Niceville, FL. Her poems have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Central Park, College English, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Kennesaw Review. She has two poems forthcoming in Prairie Schooner.

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