Offleash Werewolf Park

In view of the bleachers and the Little League diamond.--
night game, or no, we will make our way.
The sand drifts into the dry grass, and the killdeer cries
in its dust bath. Moths dither in the light that 
cannot devour the moonlight.
Our cars arrive, and then, the pack -- on motorcycles.
There will be laughter, and scraps of remembering
the last month, and then we will move into the circle.
Our one high note of defiance will plume upward, 
a demand for dark sky,  before skin melts
and teeth erupt, and claws shed their civility.
Nothing clings -- not wedding rings, not wallets
tucked with kindergarten portraits, not passports,
or even the smiles of the littlest basemen.
All of that will fall within teeth, tails and tears.

Maxime

You are blue of jewels,
on your skull, and ribcage,
and I do not mock you.
Someone has found a blessing within you --
a  gold coin, a star -- rose petals, even. 
Love is not lost with the dissolution of atoms.
Only, leave for me one sacred splinter.
This is enough for me to carry home
for my own fine and secret bones.

Backstairs Ghost

At 2 a.m. I sit at the kitchen table, 
looking at bills, drinking Coke.
There's a creak, and my husband appears.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
He smiles and says, "Wandering."
He is not a ghost, just then,
but a man clinging to the Earth
with its tendrils and vines, its October crows
and poetry in passages of dark and light. 
I summon him aloud, on the same stairs.
This house lives for the living, but 
a word abides in an unquiet heart. 

The Crocodile, Bound

When I realized I had forgotten you,
I rushed to the chamber of purple lights
and dull music. You, waiting, ensconced,
for me -- what was there then, but 
these strips of linen, failing?
In your golden eyes of sleep,
in your river of dark space,
close, we are, in this cloth,
with no blood unraveled.

The Incorruptible

I caught you laughing at the purple bones,
draped in their satin, sitting upright.
Then did my love for you melt away
like sugar in a drink of rum.
Skeletons rise up, and dance, until they
tire of you. And I once wept to hold this
body of knowing, warm, in some
fiction of sleep. Every shadow body of mine
walks in waking, flesh in red hair, singing,
sighing, but not apart from me,
as now I lie in dreams apart from you. 

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Meg Smith is a writer, journalist, dancer and events producer based in Lowell, Mass. Recent publication credits include The Cafe Review, The Horror Zine, Dark Moon Digest, and many more. 

She is author of five poetry books and a short fiction collection, The Plague Confessor. She welcomes visits to megsmithwriter.com. 

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If you enjoyed these poems, you might also enjoy the tale of horror, “Thin Skin” by Kilmo.