Labyrinth

by John A. deSouza In Labyrinth, John A. deSouza hands the microphone to everyone the myth forgot to ask. Apollo, the Minotaur, Ariadne, King Minos — each speaks in turn, and none of them agree. What emerges is less a retelling than a cross-examination: of power, of the stories we build to justify it, and of the people ground up inside them. The Minotaur, most memorably, is no monster. He is a prisoner watching ships from a tiny window, desperate not to be feared. His section alone is worth the read. deSouza writes with the compression of someone who has lived with these myths a long time. The sonnets are formal without being stiff, the longer poems expansive without losing their nerve. The collection closes with a quietly funny, quietly melancholic meditation on tending one's garden that earns every word. Sharp, humane, and genuinely surprising.