On The Eve of Wolf's Extinction

Henry Oso Quintero

ON THE EVE OF WOLF'S EXTINCTION, A RADIO MESSAGE AT THE EDGE OF SPACE

Friends, country gentlemen
women of the red cloak

It is not the moon that draws the liquid silver
Of my voice across the black starry field

It is the last mind
thumping loudly like
the falling snowflakes
across the space of fallowed tillage

The sonic dust of cattle sand
driving along the fence own s
spotted, hiding among the map of legend

Rarity in menagerie
you would only listen
If my name was Jack
growling wireless in the A.M.
500,000 megahertz praises
taking Elvis four hours from Tijuana
to reach the red eye of Jupiter

You never knowing that
beyond S.E.T.I.'s dishes
meandering wide hipped Norma jeaned
my howling yodeled deer out of headlights
pocket mice from fields of wild rye
hushed wild asses into the rocky silence of Sonoran nights

My ladies of the red cloak
it is not the sound of outer
space that will infect you

It is the fear of your wolf innards
the silence of seed syllables caught
in the throat by your own swollen tongue

Listen, it is I, Wolf in snowshoes
weeping green starry spruce
and on this winter, Sirius, in relation,
is not far from Orion's heels--
lupine, the light in empty lea

This is what will consume the skin
running blue along the eyes and mouth
rot the hands falling
on the black keys of pianos

You executioners the legends
of poisoned traps
sharpshooters one and all
name this one for me

TABLE OF CONTENTS NEXT PAGE