shouldered his arm, but all other Cretans
despised the coward. Some climbed the gunwales
and rowed to sea, some rushed through the gates
to do their worst or die looting,
but many just stood, immune to their king’s
howled commands and hollow menace,
but reluctant to flee or to fight for nothing.
Megaran warriors, unaware of what happened
to Nisos, beset their besiegers while the open
gate granted Scylla a glimpse of the rout.
She beseeched her creation to save Minos.
But arrows had already riddled his human
shield, who blushed the brine’s clutches.
Waist-deep, Minos waved at the shipboard
Cretans, bawling, Come back, losers!
Then arrows rhymed the ruthless oars,
pouring Minos in Hupakoë’s blood.
While Minos gulped, the god intervened:
the arrows colluded in ambulacral grooves
while his ribcage rounded a pentameral test
and spines ousted his eyes and ears
and his mouth composed a periproct
and his purple anus pined for kelp.
Minos now fit in a man’s palm.
It was hard to know whether Hades was worse
than such a translation. When her sobs halted,
Scylla asked the god to give her the same form.
The king ruminated a narrow sandbar,
and the princess girded her gonopores
in a fissure below where his foggy milt
was likely to settle. The sea urchins
didn’t know the new god was annoying his peers.
Minos retained a mighty lineage.
But when his father’s lightning effaced Megara,
the faceless couple couldn’t fathom
why the tepid current tingled their spines.