LYCANTHROPES IN LOVE
by Steven Cordova
The first man is in a chair, his barber behind him
shaving the hairs
off the back of his neck. There's another, a second man:
He's in the very next chair,
also having his neck, the upper regions of his back,
shaved.
He is bigger, less effete than the first & no doubt
that is why, across
the shop's full-length mirrors, the second man is shooting
the first
a look full of the hostility two lycanthropes feel,
one for the other,
when first they sniff each other out.
Still, in hairy, recurring dreams they're bound
to find themselves,
just the two of them
in a dark wood where they will once more expose their
fangs to each other, & then,
their puny arms having become legs,
clawed & roughly padded,
their bodies having become far more the same
than different, they will run,
they will run & run & they will not stop running
until their tongues hang down.
And they will do it again—they will run & run
& run—the very next time
the moon grows full.
Steven Cordova is the author of Long Distance (Bilingual Review Press, 2010), and his poems have appeared in many journals & anthologies, including Bellevue University Press, Callaloo, and Northwest Review. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. "Lycanthropes in Love" was first published in The Good Men Project.