The boy in the labyrinth wanders inside the bull’s hot breath. Each curl of mist, a blue room. Each room bears a door. A circle of a doorknob, warm to the touch. The warmth like someone having lived in the boy’s space for an age. All over the cave, remnants of body heat throb off of the corridors. A mongrel heat. Morning heavy, and arrested in the intake of air through nostrils deep like the very caverns that hold the beast. Inside the minotaur’s breath, a room he can sleep inside. A room he can hone.
Oliver de la Paz is the author of four books of poetry: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, and Post Subject: A Fable. He co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poems, and co-chairs Kundiman’s advisory board. He teaches in the MFA program at Western Washington University.