Analicia Sotelo

THE MINOTAUR INVENTS THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF HIS BIRTH

I am born: Her birthing dress is a mast in my mouth,

a moth wrecked in specks of sarcophagus black,

a parasol in the twelve-armed wheel of a phaeton,

a crinoline smoking in a fragrant fire

I crawled through her human body

to meet her spectators head on

& in the high forceps of the evening

I said hello to my mother & they all fell down

Not my mother, lovely liar, upright with her hair down

I have her fine Georgian teeth & miniature eyes,

inherit her love of disguise

& the men that I eat—their monocles taste sweet

O Mother, this is heaven: I am sent to this earth to save you

ANALICIA SOTELO is the author of Virgin, selected by Ross Gay as the inaugural winner of the Jake Adam York Prize, forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. She is also the author of the chapbook Nonstop Godhead, selected by Rigoberto González for the 2016 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship 30 and Under. Her poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in The Antioch Review, Boston Review, FIELD, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and The New Yorker.