You spread dry monsters on the pale flowers:
cracked tentacles, calcified fangs, horns
and hides and pelts of hounds of hell and
Artemisian golden hinds, lined up beside
blinded cooling cyclops;
Viper-tressed gorgons beheaded
and bagged, Scylla’s necks dragged out
of her crags and splayed against sprays
of heather and thyme, junebugs lapping
the sea-salt slime still damp on her teeth.
Herculean thief, even wildflower dusk
won’t mourn the husks you’ve laid out
against sprays of heather and thyme.
This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.
