Lyokha

The wolves would still like your children.
Leave them at the edge of forest - the ones you have broken.
It's OK, the wolves will fix them.
Beneath this rough maternal tongue broken tender skin parts to reveal a rough pelt
Tiny pointed teeth erupt from sore & purpled gums
He growls contentedly, sharpens nascent claws on the trunks of trees.
They make the coolest sound clicking down hospital corridors; listen -

tap tap tap

Let me in.

"He's clearly dangerous to other people" said a police spokesman yesterday.
this fearsome bite
that wicked scratch
(Psychological problems, but also a source of viruses and infections.)



It's really infectious, this wolfishness. The other children would love that fur, these strong yellow teeth, those atrocious claws; run on bent legs through the snow, oblivious to the bite of cold.

"We didn't even manage to complete the proper medical checks. We only succeeded in giving him a shower, cutting his nails and took some blood and other tests," said a doctor.

The wolves wait patiently outside the clinic. They make these soft throaty noises. The youngest one starts to howl - his aunt, or some other relative cuffs him sharply. "Be quiet" this means;
"or they'll get you too, cut off your claws and scrub away your fur."

The cub sees himself shivering naked & furless on the streets of Moscow, sucking vodka through filed down useless stumps of teeth. He shudders & flattens himself against the wall of the clinic, quiet & still. Shh

His aunt pulls her hat down low over her ears & sends telepathic wolf messages to her other nephew locked inside.

He sniffs the air & snarls at the doctors. Laughs this wolfish laugh as they scuttle backwards.
Nobody restrains him when he decides it's time to go.

They're afraid of infection.

"You'd better ditch that stupid red hat" growls his aunt as they run together, an invisible pack - looking for the forest.

He's out there still - busy regrowing claws and fur. You can hunt him if you want, 2000 Euros for 5 days - or you could, if we hadn't just made him up.

Our First Date

It's in the hallway and I am thinking of your place. Your place is some fucked up ghost train of a home. I turn your card in my fingers, a magic trick. I will not look at you, not ever - in this hallway or anywhere else.

A grease grey trail of fingertips across the wall there and this punch of memory tenderly, here.

I walk funny; my centre of balance is off - too far forward or something - so I'm on the balls of my feet but one foot is overly hesitant and drags a little. It's kind of like how zombies walked, before they learned how to run. I'm not wearing any shoes. I have no idea why I walk like this. It looks stupid.

Two fingers of my left hand - the third and the fourth - drag across the surface of the wall. This wall is an institutional yellowish - with a double track, smudge and dirt, where generations of third and fourth fingers repeat and emphasise the same gesture infinitely, carving an imaginary gully - some river-bottomed ravine. I am cooling my fingertips in this rushing water.

I turn your card in my fingers. You've written these precise instructions, tiny and intricate like the tracks of little birds across the snow.

I don't know what they signify.

"Couldn't we - like go somewhere else? A hotel maybe - I have money?"

I mumble into the wall

birds track smudge

My voice cracks.

"Because you're - you're scared of my house?" this semi amused sneer. You leave without closing the front door.

Some complicated potion gives me the power to decipher this code or something - grants me some protection from the terrors of your house - I convince myself it does anyhow - and follow those little bird tracks across town with a stupid zombie stagger.

I'm not so sure now.

Cold

He zones out pretty much with his head at this weird angle over the back of the leather chair. A sort of reverie - his teeth, the odd taste & the unaccustomed extra blood flow.

It's this story about ill prepared arctic explorers boiling up boots in melted snow, fading out into a tiny pinprick of nothing in some dreamy bed of ice and scurvy. The dogs might howl, if they hadn't all been eaten weeks ago.

Soon the explorers are all just so many little shards defrosting in the warm bellies of wolverine cubs, arctic foxes, or each other. It's night now and everything goes to sleep in caves or holes hollowed out of compacted snow. The paws of the mother fox twitch in her sleep as one of her babies hacks up some indigestible fragments of tweed and horn button, scratches and returns to sleep. Finished.

The story ends before whatever it is that's going on behind him does. One of the men says something derogatory about his feet. He's pretty sure that the soles of his feet have this covering - layers of dirt on dirt, compressed and shiny smooth like tar or really unsavoury lacquer or ... whatever.

Something tickles, something else stings.

A trickle of blood escapes from his nose & runs upwards, or downwards, towards his eye. He's about to wipe it away when he remembers that his hands are bound together behind his back. The knots are sort of loose and ineffectual but acknowledging this seems a particularly crass and discourteous thing.

Wearily he moves his head a little, as if to brush off the blood on the rough pelt of some sibling or other. Fragments of leather in his teeth & his paws twitch filthy in his sleep.

Finished.

Hot Dog Man

this child or those children
clutch something to it's/their chest(s)

a dog running scared and erratic a broken path across the street splatters piss as it runs.

a clapping game

low sulphurous glow bleeds out into darkness edges blur and refocus negotiate the treacherous outlines of this child or those children

a murderous clapping game

in a lift or maybe a stairwell laugh as limbs splay capricious and useless as a Disney fawn bleeds out into a darkness

his blood or my blood

drawn lazy and decorative across the glass and this mouth slurs sweetish breath of tainted sugar and acetone:

"I'm so hungry"

an overly complex and insurmountable obstacle almost - a ridiculous equation and a fraught expedition back and back again, a re-tracing, a burden

drop him awkward by the fountain, this untidy pool of malfunctioning shadow kicking his legs out of the sick puddles of orange light and he giggles politely an acceptance or whatever and mould your face into some expression - something vague and complicated like insouciant need maybe and present yourself trembling slightly.

"you want some bread?" held out like to a nervous but unpredictable creature all soft fur and sharp teeth

"here - eat it"

he makes some mime of biting and chewing like I have no language or the concept of eating is something alien and exotic to me although we've performed this routine together on several occasions

" I put some onions in - you like onions?"

a non-committal gesture and indicate vaguely in the direction of the fountain stretch out my hand

"my friend is hungry"

murderous children gather clapping somewhere just beyond the outer edges of vision brush them away a tear and a slow sensuous trickle of grease follows the vein pulsing here in the wrist

He follows this gesture with his eyes squints and shakes his head

"no - stay - eat it here"

he watches apparently rapt - this lacklustre performance of bite chew - thick cotton wool bread and slick stale onion sticks like sharp stones in the throat -and swallow, the empty space by the fountain a glimmering backdrop.