The American Poetry Review

OUROBOROS ESSAY

fleece

One person who cannot see you is you.

We can get an idea from water or gold, depending on the light.

So I know myself by approximation.

There is a likeness between the curve of the paradisiacal snake and the parabolic arch of the bridge, but placed one on top of the other, it’s unlikely they’ll line up.

Poseidon, God of the sea, earthquakes, storms, and horses, is silent on the subject of bridges and love songs.

Poseidon got his gold the old-fashioned way: he fathered it.

He turned the granddaughter of the sun god Helios into a sheep and himself into a ram and fucked her in a field of wolves.

Thus was born the Ram with the Golden Fleece.

Some say the fleece represents a method of washing gold—stretching and submerging animal fleece in a stream, then combing out what rises.

Some say the fleece was made of sea silk made by shells—a gold made of water

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