by Sixfold
You will see in her the brother
you have killed. That terrible vision
will haunt you long after
you have left her on the sand.”
“A pox on your stories!
Your mindless rant torments me. Leave it off!
You who’ve spent your whole time in this maze,
what can you know?
Leave me, phantom voice, that I may find
that curséd beast and end this sordid farce.”
Theseus thinks his string will lead him home,
but there’s no turning back from his black deed.
This violent thread, once peeled from the spool,
will not rewind. Its trace is sealed in blood.
Minotaur obliges this demand
and moves with slow deliberation
paralleling Theseus’ stumbling gait
with his sure-footed pace.
His bare feet are his eyes in this dark hall
and quickly find the object that he seeks.
“How fares your clew, Theseus?”
“Leave off, Voice. I told you once,
you’re but an ill imagining.
I hear you not.”
“And this? Is this imagination, too?”
Minotaur picks up the thread he’s found
and gently tugs it taut.
“Tell me, Brother. Does your thread dwindle?”
Theseus is silent long
and when he speaks the first dark wisps
of fear invade his voice.
“Do not call me brother, Beast. It is
your thread that dwindles. You’ll regret
that you spoke thus to me.”
“It is you who will regret who come
to slay a dumb monster and instead
will leave soaked in your brother’s blood.”
“Ariadne wants you dead.”
“Ariadne knows not what she asks,
but wishes only that you live.
She, too, will know the luxury of regret.”
Theseus, his fear near panic, has begun
to gather in the thread that he’s paid out.
He stumbles hard into the unseen walls.
“Whence flew your courage, Greek?
You are right to be afraid
for I can break this thread and end
right now this thing that you call farce.
But, hear me. I will not. Not yet.
You see, Theseus, in far-off Athens
people bow to Aegeus as their king
while, above our heads, in Cretan lands
and on the seas, Minos is the sovereign.
But here in this piteous realm
I am doomed to rule.
My power is not so easily usurped.
You are, my Brother, guest in my dark house.”
The Minotaur relaxes in his place.
He knows that Theseus’ searching nears its end
and harvests comfort from that thought.
“Another thing, Brother, I would have you know.
My mother called me Little Star and
suckled me when I was born,
but later fled in horror from
the signal of her shame.
I have known love, however brief,
and I love you, Brother.
I love all humans though they are a band
that I can never join.
And, too, I pity them that they should fall so short.
I have no place in this world save here.
I will love you more that you deliver
me from this cruel solitude.”
As the Bull-man speaks he senses
his kin drawing near.
He lowers himself to hands and knees
and draws himself to Theseus’ side.
His great horns tangle in among
the folds of Theseus’ robe and gently pull
then slide away as Theseus spins
with wildly swinging sword.
The sound of Theseus’ thundering heart
fills the Bull-man’s ears he is so close.
“Show some courage, man. You mark the lines
of ritual where others not yet born
will step in ages hence. Show them some grace.”
Theseus flails again, his weapon cutting air.
“Do not beat at me like a frightened child.
I am already bled by years of solitude.
You need but make the final cut.”
The Minotaur has bowed his massive head
and Theseus with a desperate lunge
thrusts his sword between the down-curved shoulders.
Plunging through hard-muscled flesh and bone
the knowing tip seeks out the beating heart
as Theseus collapses to the floor.
His quivering thighs are bathed in blood as
his brother’s massive head sinks to his lap.
In Minotaur’s exhaled breath the smell,
sweet-sour, of fermented grass recalls
to Theseus a childhood vision of
a flower-strewn field and a sand-rimmed stretch
of passive sea. A sharp pain grips his heart
as he hears Ariadne’s voice
praying to the gods to save his life.
Toni Hanner
Catching the Baby
My father’s birthday, the gypsy approaches,
gold ring poised on her palm, almost impossible
not to look, not to catch the baby, she knows you cannot
let it fall, allow its soft brown head to smack the cobbles,
you cannot stop your hand. Here is a cat dead in a bag,
you glance and pass by, you aren’t the kind of person
to touch, to look inside, to bury the bag in the dirt outside
your front door. You are just one of the people who glances,
remembers later to write the orange feet sticking up
out of the plastic bag as dead as anything and you’ll return to this cat
again and again, this cat serving as home if you can get there before
the patrol boat pa-pows its slow way up the canal
to your beach. If Jimmy’s on board he’ll catch the baby
and steal the gold ring. The cat was a runt and the gypsy
sighs back into the doorway of the cathedral, folding
a leg up under her skirt, putting on her hungriest face.
I stumble through cities the way I hug the wall for support
when I’m drunk, I need a description of that, how one flings oneself
at the bannister, then the next solid thing, the window ledge
at the stair landing, then the next, a lover’s shoulder, a mother’s
shadow. The cat is one of those things in a black week.
In between there are voids the ground solid enough for your feet
but the rest of your body is on its own. You are always reaching for the next
hold-fast, a wall, a bureau, a table. The softness of a lover’s hand
is comforting but only the dead are solid enough.
You keep them in jars bolted to the floor moving with you,
just far enough ahead so that you have always a destination.
Copernicus
This is only a single page, Copernicus,
I do not have what you would call a flexible
life I revolve around the sun like you said
my house does not pulse open for any passing
cousin, does not fold itself around the bereaved
no, my house holds us, the few, Copernicus.
We do not know which of us is the sun
we move into and around each other
anemones opening and closing and holding,
digesting what we need which is always.
Copernicus there is starch in my bones
I do not have what you would call a flexible
life there is city in me, boxes piled
high
leaning against one another small boats ply
rivers of blood. Copernicus
I long to sunflower turning and turning heliotrope
but I creak in my body I must bring down the heat,
the light. This is only a single page, Copernicus
because we are far from the sun in January
of this murderous year we are spinning
back into the dark when all we can do
is reach and turn. I do not have what you
would call a flexible life, Copernicus.
I revolve around the sun bereaved and holding.
Splendid Angel
I’ve always wanted to see my mother with bees
in her hair, lifting her, turning her gold, the grammar
of lightness. My mother with ice blue, riding,
a banshee of knees and serpents, my mother
as galaxy, as interplanetary dust, comet-clicking,
deep black empty howling, rain falling through sunlight
in a grove of olive trees. My mother as ocher, as mustard,
as new as the stars, as boat and wind, her flesh to fruit,
bruised pear, secret hidden in an apple,
a splendid angel, a criminal. I would take her into the parlor,
let her see her father, know him in his coffin, shake the dead
from her fingers, from her feet, from her wings.
August Poem
realizing in my chest
i have no words my throat closes
over the beaks of all the birds
i have swallowed in the night
my hummingbirds stand on a column
of air looking at me
i am the most important display
in their museum of oddities
dusky august comes
cartwheeling down through the ninebark
our orbit quickens around whatever sun
or moon finds our gravity
i can spend sunshine
like coins in the machines of flowers
Contributor Notes
Jim Burrows lives in Cordell, Oklahoma. His first book, Back Road, was published by Barefoot Muse Press in January, 2015. His poems have appeared in numerous print and online magazines in the UK, Canada, and the United States, including 32 Poems, Antiphon, Measure, The Rotary Dial, and the Raintown Review.
Ben Cromwell lives in Salt Lake City with his wife, Raven, and two children. He is a program director for Playworks and the author of Touch: Making Contact with Climate Change. His work has appeared in Flyway, High Desert Journal, and Sugarhouse Review.
Matt Daly is a poet and writing teacher from Jackson, Wyoming. His poetry has been published in Clerestory, The Cortland Review, Pilgrimage, Split Rock Review, The Screaming Sheep and elsewhere. In 2013, he received a creative writing fellowship in poetry from the Wyoming Arts Council and is the 2015 recipient of the Neltje Blanchan Award for writing inspired by the natural world.
Alma Eppchez is a genderqueer writer, theater artist, musician, and Quaker based in Philadelphia. Currently, ey* has two plays looking for homes, a dance film in the oven, and is developing a workshop using our bodies to notice internal biases. Ey was socialized as a white girl in Western Massachusetts. This was not a bad experience, but one that gave em many privileges, biases, and misconceptions of identity that ey is compelled to now unlearn. *Alma Eppchez’s chosen pronouns are Elverson pronouns (ey/em/eir/eirs/emself)
Paulette Guerin is a recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of Florida. She lives in Arkansas and works as a freelance writer and editor. She is currently building a tiny house on seven acres and blogging about the experience at pauletteguerinbane.wordpress.com. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Subtropics, Cellpoems, SLANT, and Euphony (online). She also has a chapbook, Polishing Silver.
Toni Hanner’s books include The Ravelling Braid (Tebot Bach, 2012), Gertrude, poems and other objects (Traprock, 2012), and The Book of Orange Dave (Chandelier Galaxy Books, 2015). Gertrude was a finalist for the 2013 Oregon Book Award. Hanner is a member of Red Sofa Poets and the Madrona Writers. She is a confirmed francophile who also loves Argentine tango. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, with poet Michael Hanner.
Hank Hudepohl graduated from Harvard, served in the US Navy, and earned an MFA from Hollins University in Virginia, where he also taught creative writing. He has published a book of poetry, The Journey of Hands, and he recently completed the manuscript for his second book, Riverbank. His work has appeared in literary journals and magazines, and has been featured on the NPR show The Writer’s Almanac. He grew up in Ft. Thomas, Kentucky, and now lives with his family in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Marianne S. Johnson is married with two children, and a practicing attorney in San Diego, CA. Her poetry is published in several journals including Calyx, Sport Literate, Slant, The Kerf, and in the anthologies Lavanderia, Mamas and Papas, and The Far East Project. Her first chapbook of poems, Tender Collisions, is forthcoming from Aldrich Press in 2015. “Wrongful Death” is dedicated herein to the mother, and her son.
After an on-again/off-again relationship with higher education and a decade working in retail management, Heather Katzoff returned to school and now holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and an MFA in poetry, both from Rutgers University. Her work has appeared in the Paterson Literary Review and online at Selfies in Ink. She currently teaches at the Harrisburg Area Community College in central Pennsylvania.
Karen Kraco lives in Minneapolis where she periodically alternates teaching high school science with working as an editor or freelance writer. Her profiles, feature articles, and poems have appeared in local and regional publications, and she was co-editor and publisher of the poetry journal ArtWord Quarterly. Karen shares a home with Owen and Harriet, a mischievous Senegal parrot and an anxious cockatiel whose antics might land them in a children’s story someday.
Barth Landor lives in Chicago. His novel, A Week in Winter, was published by the Permanent Press.
George Longenecker’s recent poetry can be found in Atlanta Review, Penumbra and Santa Fe Review. He likes to find absurdity and surprises in daily life and turn these into evocative poetry. Much of his inspiration comes from the news and from the forest which surrounds his home in Middlesex, Vermont.
Gina Loring holds a BA from Spelman College and an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. She was featured on two seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry, and has performed her music and poetry in over ten countries as guest artist of the American Embassy. She is a professor in the Los Angeles community college school district and volunteers with Inside Out Writers, working with incarcerated teens. She lives in Los Angeles, and she believes in mermaids. Contact her at www.ginaloring.com
Yana Lyandres is a student studying French and English as well as minoring in Creative Writing at New York University and plans to teach high school when she graduates.
Kate Magill is a Vermont native and a devoted backcountry wanderer. She currently resides in the Mojave Desert with her family. Her first volume of poetry, Roadworthy Creature, Roadworthy Craft, was published in 2011 by Fomite Press.
Robert Mammano was born and raised in New York City. He graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in English/Creative Writing from SUNY Geneseo in 2009. He has spent the last few years wandering around the United States, working odd jobs, and writing as the mood strikes. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon, where he is enjoying the natural wonders of the region every chance he gets.
Janet Smith began college at thirty-five after a string of jobs in Yosemite National Park. She graduated with an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota in 2001. She is a past recipient of a Nevada Arts Board Fellowship in poetry and the Guy Owens Prize. Her first book of poetry, All of a Sudden Nothing Happened, was published in 2010. She is on faculty in the English Department at Lake Tahoe Community College.
A born and bred Oklahoman, Jennifer Leigh Stevenson l
oves the backroads. She began writing poetry in ninth grade, studied music and theater at University of Central Oklahoma and wound up (somehow) in banking. For years she scribbled lines on napkins and wrote rhymes on the back of receipts, until she realized she wanted to be a writer more than anything. This marks Jennifer’s first time to be published.
Rachel Stolzman’s novel, The Sign for Drowning, was published by Trumpeter in 2008. She received her MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her fiction and poetry have received numerous awards. She lives in the old Brooklyn and is invisible to the bearded, artisanal hipsters of the new Brooklyn. She can be found at her son’s public school or writing at the Brooklyn public library or working at her government job, where sometimes poems are conceived under the fluorescents.
J. Lee Strickland is a freelance writer and poet living in upstate New York. In addition to fiction, he has written extensively on the subjects of rural living, modern homesteading and voluntary simplicity both online and for various print publications. He is a member of the Mohawk Valley Writers’ Group and is currently at work on a novel drawing upon his experiences as a youth in the anthracite coal strip-mining area of northeast Pennsylvania.
Abigail F. Taylor is a North Texas Poet published in Illya’s Honey, Red River Review, and Sixfold. She worked as the script editor and assistant director to Raptor Ranch, a gore-comedy now known as The Dinosaur Experiment. You can visit her on the web: https://wordpirate.webs.com
This is Tom Yori’s first published poetry. He has published short fiction in numerous literary journals such as New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Long Story, Sou’Wester, and others. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was recognized in Passages North’s 2010 very short fiction contest.
