Maria DePaul
The April Editor's Pick Poet is Maria DePaul
Please feel free to email Maria at:
marial.depaul@gmail.com
TEARING TO SHREDS
Blood runs cold and bitter
He was a biter all right
Teeth pierced to tear flesh
Pulled to shreds
Muscle and sinew exposed
Aiming at the neck but hitting shoulder
Grasping arms holding on to life
Scratching the bones
Continuing to claw
Until sated to lethargy
The bitten becomes the biter
MANTIS LOVE
When she was first bitten,
I worried that I’d lost her,
Until she put her arms
Around me for a kiss.
Suddenly, what seemed
Like a prelude to a
Happy ending has
Turned into a blood bath.
We barely just met, but
Now she is devouring
Me while trying
To cheer me up.
“There are worse ways
To die, my love,”
She whispers while
Drinking my life away,
“Our child will be the
First of a new species.”
Her metamorphosis is
Such a cold comfort.
PLEASE DON’T EAT THE KRACKEN
This is a call out to all good people everywhere: Resist
The global marketing campaign to consume the Kracken.
The fishmongers propose it to offset the recent declines in
Fisheries worldwide, but we say: Don’t Eat the Kracken.
These enormous and intelligent creatures hid from us
For centuries because they feared this very outcome.
Imperiling their existence won’t do anything but
Continue the denial about our own perilous situation.
There is no way to forestall the inevitable or mask the truth:
We have already emptied the oceans of fish.
The depletion came to the point that we drove the
Kracken out of hiding to search for new food sources.
From the moment of the discovery of their breeding grounds,
We have posed a danger to these rare animals.
Even if we follow through with the plan to “harvest”
These “Supersquid,” as the marketers have renamed them,
It is now unavoidable that the oceans will become so completely
Devoid of marine life that our grandchildren could starve.
Nothing caused this situation but our selfish, wasteful ways, so
Wiping out these already endangered creatures will not change a thing.
It’s bad enough that we have resorted to devouring jellyfish blooms,
So please stop now while there are still souls to redeem.
Oh wait, the ships are capsizing, and the Kracken are using
Their tentacles to pull the hunters into the water.
In a reversal of fortune, the Kracken have eaten the hunters,
The predators became prey, and those who over-consumed were consumed.Maria DePaul is a Washington, DC-based writer whose work has been featured in many publications, including: Aphelion; Akashic’s Terrible Twosdays; Luna Station Quarterly; Nature Writing; Poetry Quarterly; The Review Review; Three Line Poetry; Violet Windows; and Wax Poetry and Art. In 2018, her work will be featured in Bindweed, Illumen and Scifaikuest.