Labyrinth 46

The boy in the labyrinth knows the possibilities of darkness: either the beast or not the beast. Either motion or stillness. Flowers push their heads through eye sockets. A little breath hushes the velvet black. God’s eyes pierce the gloom. The boy thinks about the minotaur’s music and his own lost ball of string. Whether the nest at the heart of the maze sprouts other beasts. Other boys. Whether the possibilities know they are possibilities, rich and cold. The boy worries the light off his torch. Worries the scorched passageways. He thinks there are eyes that feel him pass. That we know each other through sparks in the dark.

Author of the article

Oliver de la Paz is the author of three collections of poetry, Names Above Houses (SIU Press), Furious Lullaby (SIU Press), and Requiem for the Orchard(U. of Akron Press). He is the co-editor of A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. A founding member, he co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry. A recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award, and a GAP grant from Artists’ Trust, his work has appeared in journals like The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. He teaches at the creative writing program at Western Washington University.