The April Selected Poet is Daniel G. Snethen
Please feel free to email Daniel at: snethen@hotmail.com
A LICHEN-ENCRUSTED BADGER SKULL
I was dreaming of fantastic things,
and what did I see?
A lichen-encrusted badger skull
staring up at me.
The road twisted through the woods,
and into the desert vast
where I espied a raven black
with a maiden in its grasp.
She looked at me and cried for me
to please set her free and then I saw
a badger skull staring up at me.
A lion roared its ugly head,
a snake lay in my bed and then I saw
the raven’s girl all quiet and quite dead.
Her lips were red, her skin was white,
her hair as black as coal
and when I looked into her eyes,
they burned within my soul.
An now my mind has fled my soul
and all that I can see is a lichen-encrusted
badger skull staring up at me.
CANDIRU
South American vampire fish
swims the Amazon
instilling fear
more formidable
than that of the piranha.
Indigenous lore
immortalizes the Candiru’s penchant
for swimming upstream
from river to urethra
mid urine stream.
Some use ligatures
or coconut shells
to impede the pices’ progress.
Backward dorsal spines
make removal unbearable
near impossible.
The piranha takes a bite
and swims on
but the candiru,
the Candiru
imbeds himself so thoroughly
that removal
often requires mutilation
or amputation.
SOLENODON
The Hispaniolan Solenodon
resembles a foot-long
shrew-like mammal
taking steroids.
Hunts the haunts
of Haiti
with sharp claws
a ball and socket snout
and grooved, toxin-exuding
lower-incisors.
Preys on invertebrates,
herptiles and bird-eggs.
Drags her two babies
around, attached
to two elongated teats
near her buttocks.
Like some morphed
piebald opossum
of Voodoo-monster lore.
Daniel G. Snethen resides in South Dakota. He teaches high school science on the Pine Ridge Reservation and coaches both oral interpretation of literature and drama. Snethen recently had two poetry chapbooks published. Anne I Weep for Thee is available through Amazon and Pediophobia (Fear of Dolls) is available through Blood Pudding Press.