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    The Boy in the Labyrinth: Poems
    The Boy in the Labyrinth: Poems
    The Boy in the Labyrinth: Poems
    Ebook156 pages58 minutes

    The Boy in the Labyrinth: Poems

    By Oliver de la Paz

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    About this ebook

    In a long sequence of prose poems, questionnaires, and standardized tests, The Boy in the Labyrinth interrogates the language of autism and the language barriers between parents, their children, and the fractured medium of science and school. Structured as a Greek play, the book opens with a parents' earnest quest for answers, understanding, and doubt. Each section of the Three Act is highlighted by “Autism Spectrum Questionnaires” which are in dialogue with and in opposition to what the parent perceives to be their relationship with their child. Interspersed throughout each section are sequences of standardized test questions akin to those one would find in grade school, except these questions unravel into deeper mysteries. The depth of the book is told in a series of episodic prose poems that parallel the parable of Theseus and the Minotaur. In these short clips of montage the unnamed “boy” explores his world and the world of perception, all the while hearing the rumblings of the Minotaur somewhere in the heart of an immense Labyrinth. Through the medium of this allusion, de la Paz meditates on failures, foundering, and the possibility of finding one's way.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Akron Press
    Release dateJul 30, 2019
    ISBN9781629221748
    The Boy in the Labyrinth: Poems

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      Book preview

      The Boy in the Labyrinth - Oliver de la Paz

      Labyrinth

      Credo

      Twenty-Eight Tiny Failures and One Labyrinth

      Before I set out to write something about family or friends, I open with an apology. The apology is similar—I’m sorry for writing this, but I have to, or something to that effect, and then it’s deleted with the next line.

      I have been writing the same sequence for almost eight years. I suppose that’s not too long as far as works in progress go. But sometimes I feel like I’m chasing someone down a twisting pathway.

      I grew up with allegory as a way to understand. This story can stand for this. This person is wicked. This person is good. This choice is flawed. This is a wise choice.

      Two of my sons are on the autism spectrum. This pervades my daily life. We are supposed to write what you know, and what I know and have known my ten years of fatherhood is that writing what I know is hard.

      Meredith and I must’ve filled out at least a dozen questionnaires assessing this and that. We both found ourselves baffled at one point or enraged at another point. The questions felt somewhat accusatory. Like the boys were some case. Some project.

      Labyrinthian. The paperwork was labyrinthian.

      When I delete my apologies, I can imagine the words are still ghosted in the pixels of my screen.

      When we co-slept with L he would dig his fingers right into our eye sockets.

      I do not know what having total creative freedom looks like. I give myself tasks—duties. My rituals involve organizing my sensory planes, and lately organization has been impossible.

      Human interaction is such a complicated thing. It is this complication which baffles my sons. Sarcasm. Subtlety. All the coded nods and micro-gestures of day-to-day interaction. A knowing glance. A smirk. An off-color joke. Labyrinthian.

      My sons are having trouble making friends at school. They are each other’s best friend and because of this they speak their own language to each other. N will pull L closer and loudly exclaim this or that about a video game. L will smile. They have an audience, and I’m pleased they have each other.

      And how to articulate this as a writer and as a father? But as a father first?

      L’s obsession with eyes continued until he was four. I had been called in to his daycare a few times because he had poked one child or another in the eye.

      I apologize for writing about you, L. I apologize for writing about you, N.

      Alicia Ostricker punched me sharply in the arm after I told her I wasn’t writing about my kids.

      Since 2013 I have been writing a sequence of poems loosely based around Theseus and the Minotaur myth. I do not name the wanderer of the maze. The wanderer of the maze is simply the boy.

      I realized that I had been writing about my sons for several years in the form of this allegory.

      This is unclear to most readers.

      Sometimes it’s important to keep secrets.

      You don’t have to see to know.

      Here’s a fact: I have written 100 Labyrinth poems. Here is another fact: I wandered in their maze without understanding them for almost six years.

      Here’s a fact: I am getting older and my wife is getting older, and we acknowledge that our sons may not be able to care for themselves when we are gone. Here’s another fact: that understanding keeps me awake at night.

      I remember rubbing my eyes after a fitful sleep. I remember looking at Meredith and seeing cuts from fingernails on her lids.

      I’m writing what I know.

      I also know this—I don’t want to be the person who fixes this version of my sons to the page. This understanding keeps me awake at night.

      I wanted to understand my sons as well as a neurotypical parent with his own limitations and his own biases can understand a neurodiverse child. I am full of flaw and misconception. I am full of error.

      And so is the language at my disposal to articulate an experience not mine.

      I apologize for writing about you, L. I apologize for writing about you, N.

      Prologue

      Minos

      Soft, the summer air. Another August’s dark-ale sunset.

      The stillness is unanswered in the temple, despite the woven garlands,

      the grains, the gems, the crates of fish strewn about the polished floors.

      Perhaps the voice of the god is quiet like a bowstring drawn tight

      or as a love which is secret. Perhaps the voice is the inarticulate sound

      of water on rock. Still, the bull’s horn shines bright and clean

      like a spinning needle. The beautiful sons and daughters of Athens

      are before the king, chained ankle to wrist, ankle to wrist, and

      in the descending sun are bolts of yellow silk. The great halls

      of Cnossus are

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