Little Evil

    Hummingbirds were the least
    of your problems. Went to live there

    for the quiet. Found gravel,
    a hound's invisible bark. Redbreast,

    mockingbird, magpie. Even the gnats
    sang. The pine thick with them.

    What a wretch you have become,
    slack as a city postman's empty sack.

    And then the dark things down
    the hill Luther told you to mind out for.

    Never know what comes up at night
    and how. His twin brother gone

    hunting and gone for good.
    The Bible tells you so, that greed

    will take you. Love the little ones,
    moth-like in their breathless cots.


    Gargoyle

    All the men you have married.
    One each year like the flu.
    The first, in the blackbird forest.

    Couldn't tell birch from pine, leaf
    from needle. Like drinking
    the house wine in a Chinese restaurant.

    Lovely posture though. The second,
    little black gods followed him
    to the check out line. Mistook

    backwash for love. The third,
    impaired in thought like the first two.
    But touching in a milk sick way.

    As imaginative as Ohio. And you,
    monster of self-pity, you with
    your hollow stone mouth.



    Bio Note
      Meg Tyler was raised in Kentucky and now lives in Cambridge Massachusetts. She has published in Agni and Kenyon Review.

    Contents
    		 



     Meg

     Tyler