Coyote

By John C. Mannone

 

a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking

skeleton that is a living, breathing

allegory of Want. He is always hungry.

— Mark Twain (adapted)

 

The dragon stomps the red sandstone, green

claws gouging ground. Its long plated tail

snakes through the gorge battering canyon

walls, boulders shaken loose. I am running

through singed air, his spit-fire breath

clinkering stones I had just hurled over.

 

The valley widens to green escarpment

saddling the Mesa. Soon the monster.

I scramble up the rumpled ground, desperate

to find a cave, a crevice, a cleft in the rock.

Sweat-palmed, I grasp the last of crystal dust

(vials mail-ordered from Acme Corporation).

 

Now, on top of table mountain, no place to go,

just toward the edge to wait the final moments.

I pick a scrub pine branch limbing at my feet;

dragon’s bristle-spikes poke horizon’s sky.

I chant a prayer and sprinkle magic powder on

the leaves and wood that in a flash transform

 

to trident goad and fire shield, just in time

to thwart his look, the laser guided fire blast.

And in the right incendiary moment,

I nullify the threat—I pierce his flesh between

the scales, roll from under tripping feet to see

his falling off the cliff, one last clasp of ledge,

 

before he plummets like an anvil hammering

armored plates and spines to rubble in a pile.

The evil dragon dissipates in his own smolder.

But what of his stealthy wings? Mangled

in a previous episode…I segue into another...

Wait! What? Oh no! The reel is running, I slip

 

into the cellulose only to find a demon wind—

the ornery devil, Tasmanian, hot on my tail.

No more amethyst, no more magic dust.