He fell off the balustrade, another
small misstep toward glory, just one among
the litany of injuries my brother
has endured during his short life—each one
a peculiar work of art, prosaic
yet absurd. He’s the jester of martyrs,
the black comic who has enough nicks,
gouges, and breaks to have suffered,
all told, one fatal round of martyrdom.
More Buster Keaton than St. Teresa,
(whose beatific guise belies marble
but still does not suspend my disbelief)
he laughs, doubled over in the front yard,
then tries to walk, stumbling toward sainthood.

Queen Pasiphaë is redeemed by the sword
when she hears her child’s echo in the cave—
not unlike her shrieks in the wooden beast
when she braced under the white bull’s shadow.
Now, justly induced by her daughter’s thread
and hand, her bastard son’s assassin weaves

in and out of the labyrinth, he weaves
more deftly than a needle with his sword,
piercing the darkness at each turn, the thread
leading his hands to the mouth of the cave—
soon Theseus will emerge, his shadow
reconfigured in the light, and the beast

now a story upon his lips, the beast
reduced to a tapestry that he weaves
from the edge of his unraveling shadow.
Yet still its blood is hot upon his sword
as he is running blindly through the cave,
his left palm scorched by Ariadne’s thread.

His left palm burns from Ariadne’s thread
as he is running blindly through the cave
to draw its blood, hot upon his sword,
and join the remnants of his own shadow.
Reduced to a tapestry he later weaves,
a story brimming on his lips, the beast

is reconfigured in his mind: the beast
and Theseus will converge, their shadows
reeling back and forth within the cave,
facing darkness at each turn, the thread
then deftly wending under hoof and sword
along the labyrinth’s edge. He weaves

through night, the bastard son’s assassin weaves
fatefully led by Ariadne’s thread,
he lunges under the minotaur’s shadow
as Pasiphaë once braced under Daedalus’ beast.
She hears her child’s echo in the cave:
Queen Pasiphaë is redeemed by the sword.

The wheat glistens in the September sun,
as bright as the fine hairs along the cheek
of a girl who points at the horizon,
where the sky and her index finger meet,
tracing the long line of her origin.
She anticipates the expanding flames
from the earth, her incandescent prison,
that vast, infinitely shimmering plain
of light undulating in the north wind,
which spills into the corners of the room
when she opens the long yellow curtains.
Combing her hair by the window, she moves
as deliberately as a composer,
her blonde rows now burning in the warm air.

collapses and the corporeal flames
flicker long into the evening,
when wind collects bits of ash and makes
the tips of the blackened fields glow. She
will arrive soon, intemperate and
invisible, to inter her breath
within the broken houses of men.
She has been present since words and myths
were realized, and gods were conceived
to enforce them, holding the courses
of temple and water, steadying
the trees as they gripped the shifting earth
with their knotted hands. She was at rest
in the white sails of man’s first conquest.

His embrace may be construed as an act,
his handshake a shill, his smile on the edge
of aggression: a wolf marking his path

will flash his teeth and pat men on the back
to sniff the vapors of his rival’s breath.
His embrace may be construed as an act

of kindness to the novice eye, his tact
a slight of hand to mask the silhouette
of aggression. A wolf marking his path

will scan the party’s aftermath,
the room refracted in his green coupette.
His embrace may be construed as an act

of ownership, circumscribed by a trap
for a passing skirt, which is the secret
of aggression: a wolf marking his path

will circle every option (then fall back
to catalogue the pearls around a neck).
His embrace may be construed as an act
of aggression, a wolf marking his path.

I. L’Approche

This bed resents a vacancy; it prefers
the hint of traffic, rumor in the frame.
I watched your patience test what it confers
when hesitation hardens into aim.
Don’t call it thought; thought files its notes away.
This is the body angled toward a cue,
weighing which remark must be delayed,
which silence makes the wider avenue.
Something always yields. We smile and place the bet.
I’ve seen the evening turn on lesser things—
a glance misread, a practiced half-regret,
a laugh that opens more than it can claim.
Lie still. Anticipation does the rest.
We’ve learned how interest rises in a guest.

II. L’Art de Différer

You grip the post the way one grips a line—
to steady it, to see how far it bends.
Like Catherine, who knew the grand design
was letting appetite instruct her friends,
you learn how power sharpens when it waits,
how favor ripens better when deferred.
She governed bodies as she governed states:
by use, exchange—by never saying “third.”
No sentiment, no vacancy, no pause
that couldn’t be revised or filled at need.
You’ve studied this: how hunger without laws
behaves impeccably when left to lead.
Outside, the drums remember older crimes.
Inside the room, the bedpost knocks in time.

III. La Coupure

They enter when the room has lost its edge
and cleverness begins to pass for need.
The wine remembers every careful pledge,
which throats to cut with courtesy.
Desire is labor, unrehearsed as play.
The skill is knowing when to bare the blade,
to let a sentence nick the tender way
and call the blood a compliment well-made.
The prophet fails who thinks this ends in light.
The source was never neutral, never fair.
What came before us presses into night—
We drink. The sentence holds; the bedsheets turn
as melted candles gutter, flare, and burn.

I. Appearances

The ballroom tilts. The mirrors double-count
our bodies, stitching fur to borrowed skin.
The wolf perfects his charm; the witch, affront.
The trickster learns which grin is discipline.
We waltz in borrowed masks, our faces lent
to appetite and rumor, slick with gin.
Each step repeats the oath we never meant,
each turn rehearses how the trap begins.
The mirrors swear there’s only what we see.
The maze insists the fault is in the eyes.
I follow, thinking freedom means to be
unfixed—unowned—until the music lies.
The wolf leads gently. That is how it starts.
The hand is light. The teeth are at the heart.

II. Arguments

The fur comes loose. It always does at last.
The witch stands bare, her spell a cracked device.
The trickster laughs too late—he’s overpast
the moment when the joke might still suffice.
The mirrors hold. They will not be outpaced.
They name what danced as fraud, what paid as price.
There was no center—only being chased:
The maze contracts, its logic undisguised.
You called it play. You called it changing roles.
You said the lead was equal, step for step.
But someone bleeds when symmetry dissolves.
The wolf remembers while the others slept.
We are all masks—yes—but some faces bite,
and some are only bitten in the night.

There are no wolves, neither shrewd nor recondite,
who would venture to touch her willfully
in the places she left exposed to the light.
It wasn’t a sin, there were no wages— she
hid the wounds beneath her skin, a pale hue
that appeared as dappled sunlight on her face.
Bitter men visit to remember their youth,
in this bed where her body never ages,
preserved in the mirror on the vanity.
The only indiscretion is the silence
in the room, the sheets now gathered at her feet.
You see, she wants to speak. Speak then,
we’re listening, intently as gentlemen
and devils may, all horns and motivation.

My love, it is a skein, a sheet drawn taught
from my elbows to my feet. We pretend
we are resilient until we are caught,
then uncover the cheeky truth: women
want and want. There’s a voice that hammers through,
an incessant beating upon the door,
that dire need for You. I tremble, I do.
Yet I would rather defer to a whore
who leaves her intentions on the divan,
who prefers to romp with the Casual Wit
than to chat with a Pious Bore in vain.
I want, too, or shall I deign to submit
I wantonly need. The rules of the game
are set, and there’s nothing more to explain.