Wolfwoman
All the gestures
she
used to repel
evil
spirits, projected
auras,
embodied voices
speaking
variant tongues,
were
of no use,
insufficient
for the task of
banishing
the one she was
in
need of most, an
unfriendly
servant of the
distilled
ones, he who was
denying
her service, jet fuel
for
an internal rocket
launch
she was determined must have
to leave the current,
mundane
gravitational pull of
sobriety
or so she seemed to
be
saying, in an
incredibly
roundabout way,
eyes
glazing over, wide
with
adrenaline, fears she
can
no longer control, in
total
denial of what was be
said,
"You want to leave
now?
or should I call 911
for
valet service?""Valet
service!?
What are you talking
about?"
"Handcuffs, strap down
gurneys,
full body restraints, shots
of
Halodol with Thorazine
chasers---
you know, the usual
stuff."
"You think you're so
smart.
Just wait for the next
full
Moon. I'll be back for
you."
And she would be,
fingernails
filed as claws, teeth as
fangs,
the wind howling at her
back.
Frostbite
Wherever it was
he'd been doing
time, there was
a premium paid
for head cases,
cold blood running
thin as the long
white scars that
would never com-
pletely heal on
his face as if
some wild thing
had tested its
claws for sharp-
ness there & a
demon had picked
the scabs off
at night from
each end creating
running sores down
his neck & forehead
where the black
eye patch sd.
CLOSED above
the socket where
the eye should have
been & what was
left in his mouth
like teeth was
gold capped, though
the spaces in be-
tween were black
crowns waiting to
be honed to a point
like those fingers
of his rattling
dollar coins on
the bar surely any-
thing they touched
would die a horrible
frostbitten death
Hell Hounds
"Do not eat anything in the
underworld"
Wherever they had been,
their environment had
treated
them in an unkind
manner,
unless they were accustomed
to
wearing clothes that had
seen
the inside of forest fires,
lakes
of industrial wastes that
could
only be encountered
wading,
knee deep, through
concrete
sewage pipes into
culverts
where stagnant runoff
bred
mutant insects, plants
resistant
to every known
defoliant,
every toxic killer
spray
currently in use. Surviving
these ordeals had made their
skins
tougher than rawhide:
sunburnt
and cracked where thin coats
of
muscle, sinew, flesh
covered
bone met their clothes that
had stiffened
into something like denim
armor,
layers that glowed in the
dark with
a strange phosphorescent aura
of
other worldliness that made
their
eyes mostly off-white with
pale
shaded liver spotting where
irises
should have been, their black
tongues
flicking broken stubs instead
of teeth,
their breath a visible waste
cloud
as they hissed something
about a
powerful, more than one keg
of beer
thirst, a kind of smile on
the desiccated
strips of skin where their
lips should
have been, their cheeks the
last firewall
of resistance for what burned
inside.
