{"id":4549,"date":"2013-12-22T10:41:35","date_gmt":"2013-12-22T10:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sporkpress.com\/?p=4549"},"modified":"2013-12-22T10:41:35","modified_gmt":"2013-12-22T10:41:35","slug":"minotaur-dustin-hellberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/2013\/12\/22\/minotaur-dustin-hellberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Minotaur || Dustin Hellberg"},"content":{"rendered":"

Minotaur<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nAsk, no, say<\/em> that the rain has sought us out,
\n      and will break as surely upon our hands,
\nnoses, foreheads, as effortlessly as
\n      it does upon the nameless fleshes of the civilized world,
\nand will not break them. As though the parallaxed
\n      and inverted images were permitted then to go on
\nindefatigably, tendril-like, spidering into other versions
\n      of themselves inside each waterbead, into another world
\nwhere our hopes had been better attended, with stricter
\n      purity, given over, until that instant of splashing bead shattering,
\nto some thing more forgiving than we have been allowed.
\n      Their clear and rounded surfaces betray none of their panoramic
\nsleights flexing back on themselves as they collapse
\n      into mere singularity of vision, a perfect conscript sight,
\nand voice. The mirror and the mutability.
\n     
\n                                                      \t\t\t\t\t\tThe barest
\nof threads of loop and tatter at the feet of the heroic
\n      and the failed. The hole in the man\u2019s head
\nthat my chemistry teacher put there for selling
\n      his platoon beer with ground glass in it is not more
\nand not less important than the rain fanning his face
\n      as his wife and children screamed in a language
\nthere is no need now to translate. His face flowering
\n      out the back of his head is not less meaningful
\nthan the sign behind him reading Beer in Vietnamese
\n      and English, by this. Mr. V told me the story
\none day after class, as if talking about his family lineage
\n      or explaining the surface cohesion of water. Cold the distance
\nthe mind makes. Even and unburnished the leaves droop
\n      on dark wet trees, and in them, too, a kind of silence. Ergo,
\nergo, pia mater. Ergo, dura mater. Who then desire
\n      the connection dared? I am not sorry that is a small thing
\nto write this poem in a feckless geography, full of
\n      disgust and pity for myself and humanity. But I have
\ndug no pit, one cubit by one cubit, and have no millet,
\n      goat blood or milk. These I would give to the living
\nfor their need. The mythology augments, like the dead in their rows,
\n     
\nlike the intractable steadiness of losses we’ve braced
\n      against before they bend in their arrival. The mythology goes to shit,
\nwas never there. Smallest things round and pompous. Round words. Yes,
\n      the disguises, and yes the unraveling. Yes,
\nthe wreckage, and yes the tapestry. Yes, i am lost i am lost i am lost.
\n      I who assumed the heroes would escape the mazes
\nwith a requisite grace and skill, I who never found
\n      the right question for the breaking world, and asked
\nnothing of the rain.
\n____________________
\nDustin Hellberg’s <\/strong>other poetry has appeared in Gut Cult, past simple, Colorado Review<\/em> and elsewhere. His novel, Squirrel Haus<\/em>, is coming out this autumn. Under his pen name, Papa Joe, Hellberg has also has written and widely disseminated several instructional pamphlets concerning the procurement and distribution of farm equipment and how to care for disabled livestock. His groundbreaking autobiography, Rocking Chair: How I Overcame Fear And Learned To Love The Wood<\/em> was a bestseller in Finland. He teaches literature and creative writing at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Minotaur     Ask, no, say that the rain has sought us out,       and will break as surely upon our hands, noses, foreheads, as effortlessly as       it does upon the nameless fleshes of the civilized world, and will not break them. As though the parallaxed       and inverted images were permitted then to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}