Kelly Madigan Erlandson
Catamount
She came to the party
as a lion, and promptly killed
the three young women dressed
as Playboy bunnies. Because her tongue
was specialized for scraping meat
from bone, she stripped their bodies
to ribbons. She came to
the party as a lion and barefoot,
her retractable claws absent
from her prints. She came to the party
although it was against her nature,
and asked them to turn down
the lights. Men commented
to one another on the contracted
vertical slits in her eyes.
She wore a cinnamon coat
that she did not remove. She came
to the party as a lion and no one was amused
when she marked the edges of the room.
One flash of her carnassial teeth
stemmed the outcry.
When the conversation bore
cornered her, she leapt straight up
and balanced on the china hutch.
By the end of the night,
oblivious to the drama, she denned
in the space beneath the desk, and guests
held their coats above their heads
as they backed slowly out to the street.
May That Light Be My Authority
after Deborah Shore
I have pledged and knelt
and I have raised my hands
above my head
washed myself in blood
and allowed the wafer to dissolve
upon my tongue.
I have slept all night on an island
underneath the heron rookery,
tied prayers
made of colored paper
to the limbs of trees
and filled tablets
with gratitude’s documentation.
I have been to the powwow
and worn a medicine bag
stout with quartz.
I have participated
in the services of scotch
and tobacco
and one night in Wyoming
I drove with no headlamps.
I have dragged
a dead badger from the water
and I have told lies.
Following my own breath
leads me down a staircase
in an apartment building
where I once lived.
I watched the wrecker cave
in the sides on the day
they took it down,
but still in meditation
I count backwards from ten
as I go down those stairs—
five counts to the landing
and turn. One time the door
at the bottom opened
onto a dark field, plowed.
In the distance a bonfire.
<< return to the Table of Contents for New Series #4: Winter 2012, Volume 2 Number 2
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