Phaedra

Yayayay!
Hello.

So I'mma analyze the title like I always do. I googled Phaedra, and wikipedia (bless its soul) told me all about her mythology. Phaedra means bright. This Phaedra girl seems more devious and back-stabby than bright to me, but whatever.
Then I google image searched for the Phaedra from Shadow of the Colossus. Man that thing is cool and beautiful all in one.
I'll try to maintain the emotions given to me by both of these allusions.

I love it when things are nice and broken into sections.

I: first of all, those "v's" in "above paved" look weird to me. Do they look weird to you? It's like they're shmushed in there.
So your first "sentence" is not really a sentence at all. It has no verb. Maybe you want to say "says" after the all-caps part? Unless that's what you were getting at with the dash, but I didn't read it as that. I kept waiting for the sentence to culminate and finish but it just ended with a period without having said anything.

I like your use of breadcrumbs-- it's a good image-- however I feel it is... misplaced here. The breadcrumbs make me think of Hansel and Gretel, which is a German fairy tale, and has very little to do with Greeks and such. It also has the wrong emotion here I think, or at least the wrong flavor of emotion. It feels too tender and grandma-bustle-y.

Also, fifty. Were you referring to America's fifty states? Because you've already named five of them, so if you want to say "other," you should say "forty-five."

Okay I'm rereading it and now I realize that those states probably all have cities named Athens in them, and maybe the fifty other bread crumbs are in other countries. Silly me, thinking america is everything. But I think you should show that somehow, maybe use only one state from America, and use countries instead?

For that singing part, I think you might need a comma before father? I had to read that little part a few times to make sense of it. You might want to read through it a little bit more.

Again, you might need a comma before mother in the following line. Are you addressing this "mother" person? It seems right and wrong at the same time. Maybe you could establish that that's who you're speaking to earlier that that?

The part about following crumbs to ruins reads a bit cliche to me.


II:

This part has literally nothing to do with giving you criticism on your poem but I really thought it was interesting.

Spoiler

Okay, you might know that I'm reading House of Leaves and you might know that that book has to do with the Minotaur in places... I don't know if you've read it, but I'll assume you haven't. The book's theory about the Minotaur is interesting.

At the risk of stating the obvious, no woman can mate with a bull and produce a child. Recognizing this simple scientific fact, I am led to a somewhat interesting suspicion: King Minos did not build the labyrinth to imprison a monster but to conceal a deformed child-- his child. While the Minotaur has often been depicted as a creature with the body of a bull but the torso of a man-- centaur-like-- the myth describes the Minotaur as simply having the head of a bull and the body of a man, or in other words, a man with a deformed face. I believe pride would not allow Minows to accept that the heir to the throne had a horrendous appearance.

I'm summarize the rest.
So Minos has some morals, right? So he locks up his son instead of killing him. It turns out that the Minotaur is really gentle at heart... well there's more but that would involve literally quoting the whole thing. Needless to say, what it says in House of Leaves is very different from the original myth.

Anyway, I had just come from reading that book (and a part about the Minotaur specifically) to reading this poem, and I thought it was a bit creepy, but I liked having an immediate back story.

I love the direct allusion to Phaedra's greek myth. I can see you've done some research too.
I like how it all is correct. You've incorporated the myths into the poem very well, but you've also used language and details that fit the tone of the poem and the series in general.
You even state that this is "fact" (or at least known and is true in the sense that this story is part of history) through saying "a history" at the end. What I think this part was lacking, however, was your own spin on this one part. I want you to blaspheme against the tried-and-true myth. Make something up based on your personal interpretation, something that would go along well. Like what house of leaves did. That's not the "real" story of the Minotaur, the author just interpreted it differently. In a way, you're already doing this with the rest of your poem, but this one stanza needs it too!
Although, the way you present it is so tragic: blow after blow, and the first part of the last line was perfect.

III:

Spoiler

(I only realized the thing about America not being the center of everything after I read this first line. (Ooh! You know what would be cool and completely unnecessary? you could somehow frame the body of the poem with all the places where Athens is. All those 55 places or whatever. (this has been sparked by house of leaves again (that book is really messing with me x_x) because it uses such different formatting, kind of like you do in all these poems, and even the general tone of these poems match the book.) okay I'm done now. Just gotta close) the parenthesis (which also happens in House of Leaves. Oh gosh.).)

So yeah, I like the first line.

The next lines are considerably creepier. o_O
And also, I assume, where this work gets its mature rating from.
The poem takes on a new sense of dark and dripping sickliness that was previously only hinted at in the beginning. It fits though, and the imagery is so vivid.
One thing confused me, though it's probably intentional and good that it did, "the sauce." Also the part at the end. Is that position supposed to mimic prayer? I wasn't sure. Maybe you could add in something like "head bowed" or something?

III(pt.2):
Well this is certainly a change of tone. Things have gone from dark and bloody to languid and lusty, which, if you ask me are two ends of the same spectrum, so good job there.
I like the first two sentences here for a reason I can't describe, because although I feel like I don't understand them, I think I really do, in my own interpretation, and that's art, so let's stick with it.
Also, I get this same feeling with the "talking wine glasses." It seems confusing, but it fits so well, and the image is so perfectly molded into the tone. The rest of this was just too perfect (especially breathing at us) to even mention.

IV:
I like how this first line ties into the "mother" thing going on earlier. I didn't see a lot of that mothering thing through the middle, however, so you may want to spot-check your themes. Regardless of if it fits with the rest of the poem or not (I can't say for a surety if it does or not anyway), I like it a lot. ^_^ The allusion to the catch-a-tiger-by-the-toe fit right in, and the other two did too.

The next part is cut off at the bottom. :c
I like the first part, it ties this together as a package, but the second part confused me and sounded a little cliche I think. I don't think you ended as strong as you could have.

And I think that's all I have for you! It worked well together as a poem. It definitely meshed well and fit in with the series.
Beautiful work as always! Keep writing!
~fortis