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Writer's pictureHearth & Coffin Staff

The Monster Part

By Erich von Hungen



It is like standing on a merry-go-round,

one already moving.


Everything up-and-down, yes, but still

circling a single point, a single grinding,

humming mechanism, a flowing, keeping it all going.

The merry-go-round not carved in wood

or made of painted, plastic chunks

but still a part of it.


The deer, that the three wolves

leap at and catch in flight

and divide, all apart -- all, all,

as the howling music blends

with their growls and grudge,

with the lapping sounds as they suck up

the warm, thick red.


That flowing kept it going,

that now flows into them.

Round and round circling in

a forest fairgrounds,

there on a carousel of sorts.


Round and round.

The bear that tears the bison open and apart,

that's turned from dark cinnamon to deepest red

around it's mouth and snout, its paws, its chest.


Up and down, death and life --

the blood, the blood.

That, specifically reused, recycled

goes on and on.


The hunter too.

He holds the bear, that one eating,

in his sights as the bear holds

the bones and grease up close and inspects.


And though he misses the shot,

his family eats burgers just off the grill

from a converted gas station diner

not far from home.


The blood -- juice, they call it -- the monster part

goes round and round with onions now and mustard --

the red that was once a cow. Happy, hungry as wolves,

they have to wipe the 4-year-old's chin and lips.


Round and round. Recycled, reused.

It circles on and on the whole big mechanism

and the music too.

The monster part that won't give up.



 


Erich von Hungen currently lives in San Francisco, California. His writing has appeared in The Colorado Quarterly, The Write Launch, The Ravens Perch, From Whispers To Roars, Punk Noir, Hearth and Coffin, Not Deer Magazine, Sledgehammer, Anti-Heroin Chic and others. He has written four collections of poems. The most recent is "Bleeding Through: 72 Poems Of Man In Nature". You can find him on Twitter.



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