Father wolf gone angry
against my mother’s blade hands,
feathers scattered over
melted Tupperware.
Her voice in mid-owl madness,
perched on the sofa bed,
the blood of every bird carries a different note
a different taste in talons.
In this season, the water tower
and its shadow sit
among the trees, dark lock
of roots, of vine, a place
where secrets talk of an escape plan,
I can see it from my window,
the torn silver Tot Finder sticker,
fireman’s hard immunity half
lost to my own mock scratches.
Mother owl knows only roil
and flame, the hooked wing
of Cowtown plates as
they climb half up the steps
and vanish. A memory
as it coasts the exposed
edge of the trees, pushes
past the angle of the apartment
window. I spit up in the corner,
an egg, a pellet, a ball
made up of fur and pinion
and fear and wound. By morning
it dries into a stone heart.
is a poet/propagandist who lives in Conshohocken, PA with his real name, wife, and children. He attended most of his life in the Southern part of New Jersey. His work has been published in such places as Hare’s Paw, Humana Obscura, Impspired, Open Skies Quarterly, Red Fez, The Red Hibiscus, River Heron Review, and Vita Brevis. His real goal is to make the great Hoboken poet/exterminator Jack Wiler proud. So far, so good.
