“Chico the Child-Eater” by Miguel Murphy

I spit one

seed of the watermelon to the floor

it shakes its six legs & walks

back into the ear of the dead orange cat. You

bark like the son of dogs

living triumph over the corpse

of small lion. What purple

night did you trot out of in your sick

yellow mask? Yellow like a killed

killer wasp, hungry & jaundiced

with abandonment, mutt you bare teeth

sharper than a breadbox stuffed with forks

at night. You smell fear,

a mother over the stroller of a newborn.

 

When you steal

your first child the blue morning’s clean

as a drink from the wrist

of a blonde-haired virgin, her lips softer

than rain pearls on coxcomb.

If you’ve come out of darkness it must be the past.

A family that tied you to a pole

in the yard-white hiss of grass

to gnaw your own paw

before the rope tore off a crooked tooth.

Now eat what you can little lost coyote,

scavenging railroads

until one day the sweetest

 

small cry from a window

makes you weak. You smell it, breath

of breast milk, sour clover, pears. Whiff

of love, because you heard it call ……… And when

you lift your snout from the fat bowl

you’re wearing a red beard! O mongrel,

no mother can escape the dream of your third eye

the curl of your lip like a politician’s

hysterical smile. I lie

to my landlord & say

you don’t exist. I feed you crisp apples & you tongue

one long fang dean in a moon yawn.