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Daniel G. Snethen

The July Featured Poet is Daniel G. Snethen

Please feel free to email Daniel at: snethen@hotmail.com

daniel

THE SHAMBLEAU

“There have been too many myths and legends for us to doubt it. The myth of the Medusa, for instance, can never have had its roots in the soil of Earth.” (C.L. Moore)

Seduces men
with her emerald eyes
and nutmeg cosmic curves.

Beckons them closer,
mesmerized by feline eyes,                               
entranced by her telepathic voice
toying within their plastic minds.

Her crimson medusoid wormy hair
surreptitiously slinks and slithers
completely engulfing them,
extracts their essence
while injecting endorphins
as victims succumb to orgasmic bliss.

JOHN DEAN, I THINK I FINALLY UNDERSTAND WHY

When you died, I cried inside
but I didn’t show it.
I just muttered to myself…why?

It made no sense,
an artistic talent like yours
athletic and intelligent
snuffed out by your own volition.

Nothing frightened you.
You rode raging rodeo stock.
Overcame obstacle after obstacle
successfully rebranding yourself each time.

Continual wear and tear to the body
didn’t permanently destroy your
crucible tempered flesh.

The visible scars,
broken bones
never dampened your spirit.

Yours was an intangible one
like the essence of nature itself,
an island of wilderness
surrounded by a sea of domestication.

Love is a driving force
and it quenches us
like water does hot steel.

But it also weakens us
when not readily returned.

And wild nature
cannot stand to be imprisoned
by that which it cannot control.

And you loved your dog
as I love mine
with an atavistic quality
like London’s love for Buck.

And you couldn’t
make Her understand
anymore than you could keep
your best friend from dying.

You had had enough.
And when a man of your nature
has had enough,
it is enough.

And  then you chose
a similar road as others,
possessed by the same spirit,
before you chose.

Hemingway did it
and so too did Robert E. Howard.

And when Uncle Leon
spread your ashes among
a favorite butterfly haunt
of the Sublett Mountains, praying:

“May your ashes enrich the Sublett-landscape,
as your presence enriched our lives,”

I believe Southeastern Idaho
waxed a bit more wild.

UNKNOWN CORPSES

Murder, not Jack’s red-rum.
Ubiquitous ewes use you.
Refined, reflected from mirror,
detection; identity deflected.
Red-rummer, cryptic liver poisoner.
Unlikely over-dosage of catechu
mixed in new barrels—redrum.

Daniel G. Snethen lives in South Dakota. His mother was born in a reputedly haunted house in Minnesota. While attending college in Idaho, Snethen once hand-grabbed an adult rattlesnake which was trying to escape down a hole. Snethen has also been known to hand-grab scorpions. He has also had a few smelly encounters with the striped skunk.

He enjoys bats, scorpions, spiders, centipedes and nudibranchs. He has a Masters of Science degree in zoology. He serves as the vice-president of the SD State Poetry Society and is currently editing their Spring 2019 edition of Pasque Petals. Snethen’s favorite piece of literature is the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.