Richard Siken
Line
Orpheus descended. The red ribbon unspooled from his mouth in
the darkness. He sang and it fluttered. There were sisters
somewhere. They spun, they measured, and they cut but the song
continued. A word rings like a struck bell. It ends when it stops
ringing. When does a line end? How long is a piece of string? A line
ends when it is broken. Theseus descended. He rounded the corners
and grazed the margins. He kept going. You can name a tree and
tether your tale to the yard. You can enter the labyrinth and pull
yourself out with a rope. Theseus killed the minotaur. According to
some, he used his hands. Others say he used a sword. How long is a
piece of string? How long is a story or a song? Theseus spooling. A
sentence ends with a period but a line continues on. I wouldn’t break
the line. I was afraid to. Too much was already broken. I lashed the
words like pack dogs, each to each, and sledded the frozen lands for
yards. I told myself the story of myself. It bounced back. It echoed
in the maze and I triangulated. You think the monster is the
problem. The problem is the thread. The sentence goes one way,
the line goes another. It makes a friction. Dawn breaks. The waves
break against the cliffs. A necklace breaks and the opals scatter like
rats. You can break a promise, you can break a glass, you can draw a
line in the sand or throw a ball of yarn at a kitten yelling Minotaur!
Measure measure, cut cut. The sauce breaks. Your heart breaks. The
car breaks down by the side of the road and you end up walking
home in the dark, exhausted and iambic. I didn’t want to risk it.
Richard Siken reads “Line”
Richard Siken is a poet and painter. His book Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Glück, a Lambda Literary Award, a Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and I Do Know Some Things (Copper Canyon Press, 2025), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Siken is a recipient of fellowships from Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.