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Why Riding Hood?
Here in Poland
they have the color the girl
the grandmother the bed
the oral motif the woodsman
with his axe in other words
the violence and the sex
come across the Atlantic translations
and time but why riding to modify hood
is there a horse hidden in the woods
with the wolf another barely morphed
nod to sex the cowl that covers the little man
enflamed with desire prodding the robe
and stirring up bed clothes
why riding as an adjective for what
covers a young girl’s blush
at what jumps from the bushes
why riding hood?
Scratching the Inner Monkey
We are monkeys who cut down trees,
horses afraid of running on grass.
Being branded barely hurts the cow,
it’s just nervous twitching
when crab legs flail boiling water.
Think of the lives saved
by tubercular rats,
chain-smoking guinea pigs,
rabbits with ulcerated eyes.
Staring at stars makes us think
of god, but hummingbirds
migrate continents on nothing
beyond the twinkle reflected
off cigarette pack foil.
We forget our first howl
is animal awareness,
our first clench
a paw.
Jaws Too
To eat the shark first
makes sense and tastes good, too,
flesh dense as frozen smoke
sliced in slabs zebra striped
on grill bars.
When the last shark
has been caught and eaten
what will we fear in the deep
water darkening beneath
our kicking feet,
what will we frighten
movie goers with in the front row,
what will chomp the starlet’s
naked legs dangling down
into the plundered,
empty depths?
David Thornbrugh currently writes from South Korea, where he teaches English
in a National University. He writes to push back the darkness a little bit at a time,
in the same flighty manner as lightning bugs. He has been published in numerous small
press journals, and once wrote the questions for a geography textbook. He prefers
multiple choice questions to True/False.
Email: David Thornbrugh
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