I let out the last of my wolves so long ago
there’s not even a smell left in the chute.
My backyard used to tipple and flounce,
but these days I’m pushing a cheddar
sandwich with a snapped broomstick
in case on the next time around it rouses.
At night the stars fall into the neighbor’s pool
and frolic like children in an animated film
where they’re more fun than actual children.
Over here, clumps of weeds by a brown bush
howling under the newly starless sky.
I walk over to them, expectant for once,
and they immediately stop. They seem
to look up at me as if I shouldn’t be there.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 5.
Christopher Citro is the author of The Maintenance of the Shimmy-Shammy (Steel Toe Books, 2015). He won the 2015 Poetry Competition at Columbia Journal, and his recent and upcoming publications include poetry in Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Best New Poets 2014, The Journal, Sixth Finch, Rattle, and Poetry Northwest, and creative nonfiction in Boulevard and Colorado Review. He received his MFA from Indiana University and lives in Syracuse, NY.
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