The Minotaur’s Daughter

A man cut out for slaughterhouse work
he’d come home invigorated, bellowing for meat
no meal complete without some blood-
or gravy-smothered dish.

Split-toed creature of excess,
his bulk scrubbed porcine pink
smooth as a penis tip after
his daily dip au jus. Hairy lord,
trailing the stench of untold arenas and altars,
lurid god of shambles and abattoirs,
rabid disembowler.
Fresh viscera gleaming
between steel watchband links
and beneath nails
thick as horns.

At the table, he’d nudge me
daring me to eat.
I thought it was an act of defiance
to swallow something raw.

At night I dream him red-eyed
steer head black as a butcher’s heart
Beringed nostrils exhale twin plumes of heat.
Now my eyes avert, breath comes short
when I am in the presence of a beefcake
desiring heavy hooves in my back
pin me beneath haunches thick and marbled.

Shuddering, I deny my tastes
I run the hair-pin turns, slippery desire’s chute,
Recalling too late that I am
a quarter goddess, a quarter cow.

Wholly his: Daughter. Child.
Blood.

Crescent crown and star
hides beneath this sleek hair.
I dream myself wielder of the spear,
stunner, tanner, carrier of the bolt-gun.

Stripped to my barest components
I am left lowing in the pit.
Forced to drive alone the lions
and after to dye the red linens
before waving them again.

My Father: Shame. Gall.
Guts.

Am forced to surrender
again and again
my throat, my heart
and everything below.

I am his china shop.

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This poem appears in West Side Girl & Other Poems, available at Amazon.com.

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