Dear Wolf:
Early mapmakers thought
the world equitable
for every animal on land
its counterpart at sea
sea horse, sea bear, sea pig
their world known only
by folklore and tale
in every uncharted expanse
exists a monster
a horse with the tail of a serpent
mermaids and men
a spinney whale of two spouts
while Poseidon plays his lute
and gods wrestle each other
what is unknown a threat
tales to tell of tails
cavities come from tooth worms
your happiness promoted by spleen and humors
lay back and let us leech
sickness by bloodlet
how different this then
from yours dear Wolf
to test for magic and spell
what is unknown a monster.
Dear Wolf:
A friend texts asking what sort of stereo system I have. He wants me to watch his receiver and JBLs while he’s in Korea. He has been going to Korea for months now, always next week. Every week he texts to give me something new and every week we have another going away party for him like the dying. He has been going to Korea for 183 weeks now and every week it’s always the next. His passport/visa has been delayed, housing complicated. I think he collects things to give away and has no plans of ever leaving. I have rooms full of his things and have rented a small 6×9 unit in the U-STORE for his glassware, 99-cent icon candles, and patterned socks collection. I am too old to collect vinyl or cultivate new interests. I have second thoughts about taking on his load. In this week’s boxes, it’s mostly old shoes, but there is a tiny, living ebony elephant –not a metaphorical one – but a breathing thing glistening in its own shit in the crumbled newspapers. The elephant, I’ve taken to calling him Commandant Lassard, blows dusty snot bubbles and whine out of its trunk like the pinched-mouth of a balloon. It insists on doing all the cooking, stomping as loudly as it can with its dumb tiny feet, which is not very loud at all.
Dear Wolf:
Imagine
you are
a retired geek:
Say bird
I miss
you
your head quivering
in my mouth
its tiny beak
little
convulsions before
and after
the way a crowd
gathers
and tenses
releases before
I spit
you a body limp
that love
can be so whole
fingers
wrapped
around a body
all body whole
body dear snake
your tongue
in mine
teeth teething
a tether
a snake
eating
a snake
so many
bodies
headless
littering and
without shape
a stage full of bones
so hollow and
full of applause
Dear Wolf:
I remember when I was a kid
every other week some kid fell into a well.
My childhood’s greatest threat was an earthen maw
with stone teeth yawning to darkness
where at the bottom, a pit gut hungry for children –
lived boys and girls that looked just like me.
They would lower food to us, radios, and tiny mirrors
to flash back up so we could communicate by light.
I grew up in Los Angeles and had never even seen a well.
I have no idea why wells love children or
why so much has vanished.
Dear Wolf:
When you arrived we knew
you were unlike the others:
sickly and underweight, fur
a strange matte, full of burs.
I took you to my breast,
fed you with the others,
let you play rough with the others
but intervened when too rough.
How you came naked and still,
abandoned, your smell sweet.
You had no taste for the blood
of fish, huckleberry, ants and wasps.
You are not growing, skin
loose. Naked but still clothed.
Small toothed and ugly, sex unsure.
I will weep for you as my own.
Nik De Dominic is the author of Your Daily Horoscope from New Michigan Press. Recent work has appeared in Guernica, Los Angeles Review, Diagram, and elsewhere. He edits poetry for the New Orleans Review and The Offending Adam. He teaches writing at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.