Nine Ways of Looking at a Werewolf
1
A lycanthropic gleam in an old woman's eye, the softest
of translations,
till she can claim a dual nature no more, and must shrink
under the bedclothes,
a snack for the Big Bad,
waiting the gleam of the timely axe
2
not just feeling…but knowing,
3
The werewolf paced,
watching the sky dim, blood-
lust thick in her throat
4
wolfhounds whimpered and fled.
on returning to the cage they found only
a naked man
gnawing at the bars
5
hunters, dancing round the fire, pelt-clad,
blood smeared, waiting
to become the beast
6
i coughed and coughed and
coughed, bent over, hands on knees. And spat two fingers
into my handkerchief
7
vegetarian be dammed…
it was hard enough not being a humanitarian, some days
8
one shot.
silver bullet.
died howling.
9
'goodness grandmama!' said the little girl 'what big teeth you have!'
'all the better to eat you with, my dear'
said the lupine figure with grandmama's voice, and
there was no woodcutter, only
a twitching tail, red cloak, red
hood, thirsty red tongue, thick
red blood.
A/N
Ok this is not particularly Discworldly but schmer….It's based on the Wallace Stevens poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. If you haven't read it it's well worth hunting down and reading…its one of my favorite poems, anyway. Stevens said that 'this group of poems is not meant to be a collection of epigrams or of ideas, but of sensations', and I have tried to recreate this in this piece….please let me know if it's any good.