Photo by Eugène Atget (French, Libourne 1857–1927 Paris) of a statue of the sleeping Ariadne, at Versailles. Image courtesy of Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Now things are getting complicated. The roots that connect my stories to the inside, the fleshy roots
at the underside of the stories, topography of land and sea and love sending sound and body from
the underside, the roots reaching to the inside
are winding and thinning as they enter, towards a center
trying to foul things up; where the threads meet is thrashing:
Minotaur again, shapeshifting or some shit.
The father-love the sea-mass-lift the failing-fear all roiled the same: and it’s still Minotaur in this
inside part, can’t excise it need to trace it, find its logic, sketch the coarse crossing hairs, heft and
place the organs, find the bevel where bull becomes man and stop
and right now it’s the gray flashes; horn and skin are relief
then fear, at losing it again, losing the plot (thundercloud sails, poison cup, deep cliff, in variable order).
And now step next, in the new city, subtle glint, now
a tug, cock-eared reckon that who’s really at the center
is not it, is less pounding flesh than sidelong
sylph, lady-shaped princess.
That she’s who’s been surging still in the rock-walled dirt-floored heart, she’s where the stories meet.
Ariadne held the core there, held, fingers through the roots, exalting keeps me forgetful, tender kept pulling.