She dove forward, drawing power
from jealousy, and swam to the ships
and clutched the stern, catching the eye
of a sea eagle with orange wings—
her unhatched father—who flew downward,
hoping to break in his beak on her flesh,
frightening Scylla, whose fingers loosened,
but whose feet the breeze forbid to touch
the scudding waves: Scylla was pinions
and as a bird 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.