photo by Rachael Pongetti
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Survival Song
Don’t worry about me on latenight subways
coming home down snowy abandoned blvds.
I am La Coyote she of the white track
loping through thick drifts the stinging
crystals at my eyes muggers drop their arms
at my approach murderers withdraw back into
doorways shivering as my shadow floats over
the snow trotting soundlessly up second ave
“German Shepherd,” someone says to calm his
startled companion but really I am La Loba
the she-wolf a low hum in my throat
a terrible power in my yellow eyes junkies
quiver haggard & dangerous con men
skirt widely as I pass them moving at a low run
down 110th perverts howl & race for cover
I am La Coyote invisible in the deepening snow
no one touches me I make it home everytime.
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Maureen Owen, former editor and chief of Telephone Magazine and Telephone Books, is the author of Erosion’s Pull from Coffee House Press, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and the Balcones Poetry Prize. Her title American Rush: Selected Poems was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and her work AE (Amelia Earhart) was a recipient of the prestigious Before Columbus American Book Award. She has taught at Naropa University, both on campus and in the low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program, in Naropa’s Summer Writing Program, and edited Naropa’s on-line zine not enough night through 19 issues. Her newest title Edges of Water is available from Chax Press. She has most recently had work in Blazing Stadium, Positive Magnets, Posit, and The Denver Quarterly. Click here for her Poets on the Road Tour with Barbara Henning. She can be found reading her work on the PennSound website.
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Jackson Pollock, The She Wolf, 1943