By Johnny Cate

    This one’s so lit it gives the sun
  a run for its money—Wolf Moon
on the come-up, shadow-casting

    past midnight, mouthing lesser light who?
  The fanged fox skull I found beside the dry
creek bed cries for the rest of its body

    and the back-to-black Winehouse
  mountains flex like the scapulae
of a gaunt predator on the prowl.

    You could sell me hell before the idea
  these trees’ll ever be green again—
the two-toothed insomniac who

    clerks the Tractor Supply could check
  me out, laser this barcode burned
on my heart. I’ll pay in exact change.

    I’ll total up, honey, howl
  silhouetted against that albino dime
in the sky. I’ll hunt Winter’s young, throttle

    each day til something hot starts
  running, steaming in the beam-spill
through the stripped boughs. Everybody’s

    chalking their fallbacks up to Mercury,
  but I’m talking time’s blood to coat
the throat, talking apex killer energy—

    this freezing hemispherical spell’s worst
  nightmare: me as Summer’s ghost, lupine and
loose where I sure as shit shouldn’t be.

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Johnny Cate is a poet, copywriter, & vintage T-shirt collector from Asheville,
North Carolina.