The web's first magazine devoted to stories about life in giant artificial structures created by forces beyond human comprehension

Tangled Legs

by Greg Beatty

Ask the Minotaur to sum up his life.
You might expect him to mumble, "Lonely,"
perhaps to mime his longing for a wife,
or of his kind to not be the only.
Instead he mutters only, "Tangled legs,"
then disappears into the great dark maze,
leaving you to parse meaning from his dregs
and stumble blindly after him for days.
You see his blood drawings of Icarus,
sketches of Pasiphae, moist and mounted,
and the labyrinth mapped, the color of rust,
each trackless hall in his prison counted.
Each twist of fate from legs unwise tangled,
leaves his bullman's life all sere and strangled.


Greg Beatty lives with his wife in Bellingham, Washington, where he tries, unsuccessfully to stay dry. He writes everything from children's books to essays about his cooking debacles. He has a particular fondness for speculative poetry—he won the 2005 Rhysling Award—and flash fiction. His new chapbook Phrases of the Moon is coming soon from Spec House.