and we were all fast asleep- fastened
like combination locks without numbers-
I woke to a screaming dog-carnage jugular-rippage
and tooth-exposing snarlage of something
that stopped
before I knew what it was;
and I lay still for a time
poisoned with terror, paralysed with the poison,
wondering should I unbolt the .22 from the rafters?
or barricade the door that is as solid as a paper bouncer
in a country pub.
In the morning I say to the kids:
Did you hear the horrible noise in the night?
but I don’t tell them that I think
it was the sound of a young man
with gappy teeth having his throat ripped out.
Already I know who he is.
Saw him yesterday slouching along the road,
hoping for a ride.
He is down there now in the tick-infested bracken;
the sour-stemmed fireweed;
the sluggish, algae-thickened creek.
Emptied of insides, by now,
like a rabbit mauled by a dog,
so that all that is left is a funny glove-puppet
you would never want to put your hand inside.
At 8.20 the children become their other selves
and elbow out the door, leaving it open to the frost.
I sit by the fire, unable to warm my hands,
and read about those post-modern artists
with gappy teeth
morbidly deconstructing themselves.
I should cry, I know, at the futility
of all those butchered bits they will one day leave behind;
but they are ludicrous somehow,
lying in the grass like that
with their guts ripped out.
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