Chris D’Errico

Skinwalker

In a fallen world, there are stories

from wicked ones. Heart-songs lost.

Chirrups. Cedar cairns, teeth of maize.

My thorax is a paranoiac sculpture.

Sting of nettle, sepia bark and juniper.

I will peel away. Burrow into privet.

A trick of light, fading in the vespers. 

Attenuate my ears with silk from larval

winters. Feral palms. Dewy spurs.

Thunderbirds, painted arroyos, dust.

Purple flesh, slouching mules, feral

inside the corral where the sheep were

herd. Bald, silent. Shadowed. Now,  

the blue grind of an accordion. Feint

crackle of tobacco. I am the twang

of a harmonica. What has been denied

has been denied by fate and character.

By feather, glistening bone and flesh.

God's eye yarn, nose to a blade of grass.

Bees rustled inside the knot of a willow.

An eagle chortling, swooping over

the mesa. Nestled in a sienna grotto,

my beak grafts heliotropes. Death

rattle chorus. In a lycanthropic squat,

I play hurt. I am a lump of carrion

on the peaks of mushroomed rocks.

In a fallen world, blood is substrate

and tears reek of belonging. The buzz

of whiskey. Straw hats lay around

a campfire. Silver cups, leather hands,

smoke and swagger. Root chickory

in a dented tin, black as a helicopter.

Lizard-cold under a skull-white moon.

Muted, I am a cactus. Pupil of diamond

and blade of a shoulder. Spiders build

webs in eye sockets. Quiet as a blown

tire. Bullet of thistle, ash and horn.

Chris D’Errico’s writing has appeared in various print journals and online magazines, such as: Otoliths, CounterPunch, Misfitmagazine and Weirdyear. He has published several poetry collections, including "Vegas Implosions and Exterminator Chronicles" (Virgogray Press, 2012). Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, D'Errico lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with his wife and a small clouder of house cats. For more, visit www.clderrico.com.