Now these next poems are new, and I
intend for them to be a book-length sequence loosely
inspired by manga and anime in which the speaker is
a human who is in love with a shapeshifting monster.
One of his forms happens to be a human.
So the title is "Bakemono," which is Japanese for monster.
"Metropolis winter, what of the hothouse bromeliad,
song at the threshold, the wind at my back, a panic of birds,
and through the portico, abandoned hope?
The wind asilo, petals flapping like hounds, what have I
wrought, this funeral in which the road to hell
is paved white?
I loved a monster.
I loved his humanoid form, body fulcrum, and light speed.
I loved his manifold grief, mouth
a hive of honey and stingers.
My incubus, my augury, my contract, my ticket, my life,
I summoned, he answered saying, he had always known me.
The city walled in snow, our only island."