Dear Red

Do not mistake me; I am no
carrot eater, no wall-eyed
nibbler at grass nor blissful
mulcher of leaves. I am what

you are taught to fear—
lion, leopard, jaguar, wolf.
From my mother’s milk,
I was weaned to the hunt.

I gather bones, not straw
to line my hut, and suffer
no flesh to wilt in my mouth.
There are two kinds of creatures,

my father said. As I quaked
in my paws, I nodded my head.

Stick Man

The devil you know
trumps the devil you don’t,
my grandmother loves to say.
But in my sleep, the goblin
refuses to scribble his name.

At the corner of Taylor and Lee,
where sidewalk tattoos lie salted and sanded
with mazes and spirals,
and burnished with Cambrian crumbs,
he unrolls his oilskin gaming cloth,
and because I’ve not yet mastered chess,
we settle for checkers instead.

Midway into our moonless match,
splinter fingers inch forward to cheat.
So from the grave-green parking strip
on which all dreamers meet,
I snatch a fallen ironwood branch,
and swing it as hard as I can.

I still hear the crack
as his arm snaps off
and drops like a staff to our street,
then, like a snake in rainstick forest,
rattles beyond my reach.