Minotaur

You wound a ball of twine around my eyes, then pinned
the end between my fingers.
You gowned me in white tissue
like a hothouse nectarine.
The furtive door at last unbarred, I was
amazed at the garden’s suggestion
throating from vining flower-walls
in breaths that quickened with mine.
How long I lingered beneath
sun awnings and a stone-and-mortar sky,
only you know. For when I found the throneroom
festooned with pelvis bones,
the twin-fingered god on whose nether lip I hung
a kiss, a crape-gartered barb,
was you – you the pursued, yours
the bull’s head draped with fragrant lash-black hair.

Peter Kline
“Minotaur” first appeared in Tin House, Vol. 9 No. 2.