as they disappear. I’ll prove I’m brave
again: I’ll face my father and pay
the penalty. She turned home,
but feathers had defaced her father, who tacked
his orange wings and whisked downward:
to claw her eyes out was all he craved.
Nisos chirped when he nictitated,
and his daughter pursued the sea’s protection
till her flesh flattened: Scylla was scales
and as a fish is called Kiris, a name
she’d fulfilled by cutting her father’s lock.
When Minos got home, a hundred bulls
bloodied altars bracketing the shore
to fulfill a vow to his father, Zeus.
Megaran spoils garnished the palace,
but his family disgrace kept growing despite them:
Pasiphaë’s filthy fornication
was palpable in the binary body
of the misbegotten, the monster she’d borne.