The Ginger Werewolf

The Ginger Werewolf

Mark Coleman

  Every year comes another eccentricity thinking it's a New Year's resolution. Really it has more in common with a Christmas present. The kind of small item thrown in a large box as a means of throwing off the guesswork of children. Even though, of course, the rattle is telling.

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  Stopped in your tracks by the growl of an angry dog. The dripping jowls. The bristling hair. Bestial fury in her eyes.

  You can't understand what you've done wrong. What cause there is for offense. It seems a minute ago you were elevated in her estimate. Now, it's as though the minute hand has swirled back and you're reliving a moment in an alternate reality. 

  One in which there is no room to err in the slightest. The tiniest fluctuation of voice, at this junction, could come back at you a hundred fold. So, you step back a pace in your mind to chew on the druthers.

  How to darn a rip in the cloth of time? A rip that bleeds, no less. You look into her eyes for a clue. What you find there is a patient brutality.

  You keep your hands stiff at your sides. Bite the inside of your lip and think. You try to grasp her perspective, and come up short. 

  Surely, there's a hint beyond the imposing posture, the unromantic dilation of pupil, the tick of lip. Surely, there's a sentence you could string together not overly apologetic but still hitting a bedroom nerve.

  You know there will be no makeup sex. For without the passion you are so tenaciously trying to light, wordlessly, there can be no making of love. The stand-in would be a pornographic fuck. Replete with the obscenity of emotion you are trying, on your end, to avoid.

  You don't want a fight. You are all to familiar with the feminine K.O. The twisting of words into a knot of vines that canopy forests. The grandfather calls out an hour. Though, an hour has not passed.

  You race through an entire vocabulary only to palm a single vowel. This you grunt then retreat. You can see the string unravel. It hangs there against her breast.

  You wonder if you should try to pluck it. But like gray hairs, you know another will only take its place. These are growing at an astounding rate.

  You picture her as a werewolf. A lupine lover refusing to bite. The jaundiced eyes of a drunk with only 40% of his liver left. She will never stoop again to leashed companionship.

  You play your own trick on time and roll back the years. The first time you called her after pacing back and forth in your kitchen. Searching for an unassuming way to start a conversation with the girl who surreptitiously slipped her number into your liquor bag.

  You didn't know what she looked like then. Could never have imagined her as the ginger werewolf you picture now. She was more like a porcelain doll. Something to be treated with the utmost care.

  You ended up with a faux pas introduction that as far as you could tell, she did not hold against you. You suggested a time and place for a date. Here you faired better, for within the unread manual was the rule that a dinner and a movie was out of the question. The first impression you evidently made would have to be followed up with something unexpected yet within character.

  No time for apprehension or insignificant pauses. You had to strike and strike quick. A fencing move that could not be parried was in order.

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  The peach pit fell from her hand. It tumbled slowly along the gutter and into the ocean. She sat on the bench with you, and took your hand in hers. 

  She did not speak and she did not have to. The bench was warm. The sun was bright. 

  You leaned in and kissed her when it became too much. The old who had lived and outlived the moment walked by and smiled.

  Later you sung her a Leonard Cohen song. She asked if you were really her man. You answered, in no uncertain terms, that you were sure of it. Doubts belong to the future anyway.

  The first time you conjoined bodies was not the first for either of you but it seemed like it. Neither of you ever put any real heart into one night stands. Herein laid the revelation.

  She was exquisite in her movements which made you clumsy in yours. You left your socks on for fear that taking them off would send you tumbling backwards. You didn't want her to notice that she embodied everything that had ever overwhelmed you.

  In Cancun, when they came out and stuck their red flag in the sand. It took you so long to swim back to shore. The waves that tugged and begged for you. You thought you were going to drown. 

  Here in the future which is the past, you are drowning in such a different way. There's a rip in her stocking. You point it out jokingly. The jeans on the floor have rips in the knees.   

  There's a little crosshatched bow on her purple bra. The three rows of semi-circular hooks you have to get past. The straps slip from her shoulders. Leaving half then the entirety of her breasts showing.

  A suckle at the teats of the She-Wolf of Rome. Tarzan like you climb up and up until you reach her lips again. You undress each other.

  Thinking back on it. It seems there was a misplaced hair. You chalked it up as a fluke of the gods. No god is perfect even when you capitalize the "g."

The Cul-De-Sac

The Cul-De-Sac

Mark Coleman

  On the Fourth of July, our fireworks show came from the heavens. We were too broke for so much as snakes, anyway.
  The wind blew back my tore up peacoat. Exposing blood stained jeans. It changed directions. Trying to knock me over like an adolescent cow tipper.
  They go off. You listen to them as you lie drunk in your room. You thought of walking down to the park. But you don't need to see them. You've seen them before. It's better to just hear the dogs reaction to them.
  Earlier it was just kids throwing poppers at each other. You thought it was funny to do it in theaters at that age. Unfortunately, you could never throw them hard enough that they'd explode against someone's head.
  They symbolize sex in the movies. You think of the sex you're not having. All the hand holding you're not doing beneath that display of patriotism.
  All the drunks in tanks with small windows and no glass feel abandoned and forgotten as the semi-elite nation fattens itself up on the Stars and Stripes with friends and family at beer cooler barbecues. You're a step away from suburbia but you haven't made it yet.
  The city is a broken shard you want to cut yourself with. A shattered reflection of the humanity you've never mustered the courage to regain.
  Godless this nation of man made meteor showers. Dreams forgotten. The Sandman an Indian Giver.
  The gun shoots peacock plumage that try as it might will never reach the stars. Duds those that are not gun powder flowers. They are impertinent enough to not give us the microcosms of color that we so desire.
  It sounds like the finale. You cross your hands over your chest. Your breathing is labored. You use sparklers to light your cigarette butts. Toast a hungover nation with vodka that could strip paint.
  It sounds like Iraq out there. A homeless vet with PTSD cowers on a bus bench wishing he could disappear. He doesn't. The war drags on and on.
  The people revolt. Their morality rewarded with bullet holes in their heads. The puddles of blood expand, and the nations fuck themselves in them.
  Hermaphroditic in self accolades. The essence pouring into their cunts from their cocks. An essence with the past stamped over its face.
  The mouths snarl as we beg for scraps. Threaten to snap and bite. The main target in the killing field zigzags. Hoping to throw them off.
  The scope that holds the murderous eye crosshairs him. A minute later, and his brains are on the asphalt.
  The brains to which a mind was knighted. A "Sir" of beliefs that the average man would not find unreasonable.
  Children of napalm run down the streets naked. The refuges lose their cubs, and cry against concrete pillars. The niggers are given syphilis. Transformed into sideshow attractions.
  Their noses fall off and their cocks turn into unruly blisters. Run down the legs of their pants. Rivers as brown as the Platte.
  MK-Ultra watches spiked johns scream and convulse. MK-Ultra erects towers. MK-Ultra drinks too much whiskey.
  The Stingray watches. The sky watches. You didn't want tan lines. You wanted to impress him, and ended up impressing them.
  They size you up, and eat your innards in the airport. Play tug of war with your large intestine. Trampoline on your udder sized breasts.
  They drag him out of their patrol car and slam his head against the wall. In the cell, they are unrelenting. This is the American way.
  Bleeding and apologizing as they strap him into the chair. Bleeding and apologizing as they spatter him with more threats that come out as spittle.
  A broken nose with a thumb driven into it. A beaten companion trying to fade away into its paws. Forgets its species and thinks its a hedgehog. The canine unit is ready.
  They round us up. The tanks run down the gardens with all their carefully selected perennials. Wives weep as they look down at their severed green thumbs.
  The tank men wail beneath the unrelenting tracks of wheel. Tiananmen Square is far from here. This is just a neighborhood street.
  That is just an arm that belonged to a mechanic. That is just a leg that belonged to a marathon runner. That is just a head that belonged to a philosopher. This is just a Cul-de-sac. You'll never escape.