Labyrinth
There are no minotaurs here.
The tunnle drops a quarter mile.
A plummage of salt in the earth
opens mythically downward.
Spiraling 178 miles long.
There are churches
and saints being born.
The cave is full of beseechment.
An expanse that held evil-
that has been filled
with seven centuries of corpses.
Every one perfectly preserved.
A shrine to Delphi.
A place to place our terror.
A maze of amazement.
The excavated on our table.
Today tourist walk its turns.
It is safe to reflect on horror.
Appropriate to say prayers to a princess.
Marvel at how the grey salt becomes clear.
Beyond the organized tour
the history still rages.
The mine calls to a missing Minotaur.
The salt goes uncollected.
Southward Running Shadow
1
Because the sky keeps turning to ash
we walk drained to the smoking area.
I dust the cafe several times a day
but the destruction still accumulates.
What else to do
as the storm drives down
to where my daughter lives?
The threat that my grandfather fought
was one half of a battle.
The flag that he was buried with
returned and joined those who he fought.
He didn’t win a war.
I haven’t slept in a garage in months.
The police are seizing the fray.
Each day becomes more volcanic.
I await a tide.
I drag a beach fire to the challenge.
I dare someone to stop this.
We hold mobs of compassion.
We ram ash covered arms into hope.
We flood with correct now.
We faith in forward.
2
An apogee 750 miles high.
It hangs eclipse between earth and moon.
It is a stitch, out and back in.
The five minute thrust,
a cut from gravity. A needle
to space. The totality of return.
Tests are executed. Results feared.
My friend lives in the local blast zones.
Back at home we’re too busy drowning to help.
It keeps getting hotter here.
In the west we’ve been smoke training.
Some of us will have to live.
I’ve been saying plague prayers over flames.
I’m calling locust. I’m calling jellyfish.
The toads turn to blood so everyone calms down.
We sit together with the threat
of a vaporization stitch work.
These needles are pointed everywhere.
Traveling for two minutes at four miles a second,
the target is quick,
I hope to be in the inner cloud.
A horror of promise of peace.
For once we’ll be all together
watching the air turn to fire.
3
Topping the tank.
He’s driving from Ohio.
An event within a series of events.
The pathway curves south.
There are collisions and obscuring figures.
A fester of finality.
These dead things
pulled from the ground, refined,
they require us to place something in return.
The man of soldiering age
goes soulless to battle.
His intention is to sackcloth the sun.
Excitement as a hot coal in the throat.
There will be a crossing in space.
People prepare for a momentary mass migration.
An event within a series of events.
Although it is well mapped
there are still eclipse deniers.
Outside the totality zone cites stop.
All citizens gaze up through dark lenses.
These are the events that stop wars.
A burning for totality
with the secret faith
that the darkness is transformation.
Driving headlong into 10:20 am PST,
there is eerie everywhere.
A questioning of light the rest of the day.
Within the chain of events
comes the promise of an invigoration
of a collision that longs to last a score.
(page five of nine for southward)
These are the new mechanics.
No longer a slide by. No momentary shadow.
These pistons beat into other pistons.
The engines froth.
The exhaust sneers.
The moon accelerates.
In the desert last night
a city became a battleground.
The friction becoming flame.
We know not to look at the naked sun.
An event within an event.
We’re still waiting for the shadow to pass.
4
The summer was stabbed open
on a light rail train in Portland.
The warmth drawing a pale spectacle from the ground.
The year started with a gun shot in Red Square.
They are showing up everywhere.
They’re in cars. They’re in hats.
They hold office and the ears of officers.
They’re carrying pepper spray and shields.
A plague of drunken rats.
The stink of sun warmed shit.
They gnaw my eyes while I sleep.
They hide in plain sight during the day.
The herald demons who sing end.
Desperate, they don’t think
that the sky has enough smoke in it.
They go hunting through hurricanes.
“Salvation through extinction,”
shouted from a car
barreling towards a mass of people.
5
These final gifts
from the summer rage
before it passes to a vengeful fall.
Birthed from winter violence
and the despair of spring.
The right eye passed over Texas
bringing a litter of explosions.
Water is evil in this arrangement.
The left eye is looking for Florida.
It sees to everything.
The wind tells false psalms.
The flaming tongue that is Montana.
Our homes are burning or drowning.
We live on a long on fire in the ocean.
Storms keep birthing in the sea.
When will one pass over
my daughter in Virginia?
The rumors of fall are everywhere.
No one can tell what it will exact.
These are the days of broken records.
In cafes and bars there is acceptance
that the conclusion is coming.
The conversation isn’t even whispered.
Saint Kinga of Poland
Before they came to take her from her home
she cast the burdened engagement ring
into the Marmures salt mine.
This is a time of miracles and arranged marriages.
Her wedding was ordained and necessary.
An affair filled with chastity.
Along ribbons of salt
the ring travels to Wieliczka.
A miner breaks it free from a crystal.
A sign that you would die trying to forget.
This was the beginning of your ascension.
A title of princess to be rejected.
A saint will rise from this salt.
She towers 331 feet underground.
She holds charity for even those beneath the earth.
700 years after her death
she was brought to the hall of the saints.
Her name continues to change.
Jeremy Springsteed is a barista living in Seattle. He was one of the founders of the Breadline Performance Series and is one of the organizers of the Chain Letter Performance Series. His work has been published in Raven Chronicles, Mantis, Make It True- Poetry From Cascadia, The Paragon Press, and forthcoming work in Pidgeonholes and Pageboy.