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POEMS
Created: 10th May, 2016

Medusa and Minotaur Take Tea

The china is in smithereens
before our tea has even brewed
but it hardly matters.
Minotaur is half bull
and a little clumsy
but bigger things have been shattered,
like our reputations,
and we are here with pen and paper
to set the record straight.

We blame the poets
and the storytellers
and the kings playing at war
who wanted this head and that head,
this pesky soldier
and that far-off monster dead.
Often they didn't even leave their thrones.

'I didn't even like the taste
of human flesh, but it was all they sent 
into the Labyrinth,' lows Minotaur.
I write this down,
and also that I didn't choose
to have a head thrashing snakes,
to turn eveyone who looks at me to stone.

The poets didn't care to judge
the malice heaped on us
by petty gods,
just how we ended up
and our ability to finish off
their 'heroes' Perseus and Theseus,
men we'd never heard of,
coming with swords and shields kill us.

Wouldn't you put up a fight?
But of course it was useless.
In stories, monsters always die.

I get some sturdier mugs and pour the tea.
My hair hisses and seethes.
Minotaur asks me to write down
that we were lonely.

VIDEOS

Rachel Piercey - Medusa and Minotaur Take Tea

Video

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