Gryphon Beyerle
Like an animal who died in your walls Whose only stink of rot is its silence It used to thump for you and scratch and chatter It leaves you lonesome, the rat! When you quit the wine and smokes You reload yourself with tooth whitener The simple detox of lifetime miseries A sweaty palm ties handsome shoes Never mind that something inside you Drags like a water jug in a plastic bag Stretching down and downward until its weight bursts The bottom and explodes across the ground How quickly the world smiles and forgets that you were Fat and mean and broke and lost And of course also creative and new, perfect and raw But now this is happiness– you are truly happy! It is something achieved, all of it, The home and the partner and the savings and the good. Besides your leech – As it gloms the brain – forever in everything – sucking and gnawing and thump scratch chattering – Onward for-ever – it’s you
Gryphon Beyerle lives in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio and has a BA from Ohio University. Her work has appeared in Sphere, Fangle, and Remington Review.
Old Water Rat Publishing 