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.