The new king went hunting. In blaze orange and designer wolfskin hats. On flat bed trucks and ATVs. The new king went hunting and returned hefting canvas sacks brimmed with feathers and fur and legs and snouts. Cattle sheep geese small bear and fawns. Blood filled the canvass and overfilled the canvass and the cleaning staff mopped blood wherever the king last stood carefully articulating the nature of her prizes.
The new king hunted wolves through our city streets. Yellow eyes and backs arched. Wolf packs bounded down city streets chasing cars, and eating garbage and the new king followed high above amidst a whirr of chopper blades. Wolves cowered behind dumpsters and packing crates in back alleys and high above, the blaze orange king, and high above, forest of blades.
The new king cleaned and mounted her kills on cable television. Yellow and red viscera glittering like gems. “First of these devils I’ve bagged,” she grinned to the camera, hand carved ivory teeth.
The new king hunted often. We heard her whirring above, the terrible whirring a forest of—, and she drifted over our city half dangling from the chopper, rifle barrel glinting.
The king hunted often and when the wolves were gone she switched to teachers and when the teachers hid in their offices, behind walls of books, she switched to school children, for isn’t there an element of the teacher in the student, the new king mused, or we supposed she mused, and when the school children were hidden beneath boards in attics throughout the city she hunted their books and desks, their class turtles and microscopes. She gouged and shredded their text books on cable television.
The new king hunted often and we learned to stay indoors. We learned to not breathe heavily. We learned to hold close mother and wife. To muffle the mouths of mothers and children. We learned to pull the shades. We learned, the slightest flinch—we
The new king stalked the streets in blaze orange and designer boots, the heels— The new king stalked with red eyes or eyes we dreamed were red or eyes she wished were red. She stalked now the gristle or teeth or low frightened moans of wolves. She stalked our libraries and shot our books ‘til the fragments of pages flittered down like feathers—
—the heads lonesome and red eyes lost, as she grafted steaks from their flanks and ground their bones to sausages on cable television. The low moans of wolves, bodiless, articulated the whirring of blades. Red eyes, the blood of our hearts, as her spotlight shone past our windows—
The king hunted often. Her eyes were red or were those eyes the eyes of wolves, wolves on television. The king hunted often and we remained silent within.
Robert Kloss writes his stories stowed away on trains and scrunched up in adjunct offices throughout boston. He also gathers stuff here: http://rkbirdsofprey.blogspot.com/.
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