The August First Selected Poet is Daniel Snethen

Please feel free to email Daniel at: snethen@hotmail.com

HUNTRESS

Australian mystique. A tattooed woman.
Indecipherable, un-dragon-like.
Her eyes alive, like a loggerhead shrike’s.
Wild, aloof, free willed—enslaved to no man.
Her screeching spirit shrieks: “I am human.”
But, she embodies a spirit—shrike-like,
hanging the carcasses of men on spikes—
indecipherable, she is woman.
Neither black nor white but ash ridden grey,
obscuring the tattooed lines of color,
she hangs them drying for another day—
these men of black, white, yellow, red color.
She is a wordsmith, a butcher by day—
at night, an ash-grey killer of color.

INCOMPATIBLE

moonlit attraction
sanguinivorous embrace
A and B don’t mix

PISS-ANTS

The bone china white porcelain toilet
stood in the center of their living room,
like a pagan idol, spotless on the outside,
the ochre-stained bowl cluttered
with toys and fresh plump red strawberries.

Amazed, I stared, wide mouthed
at Kim and Juliette’s toys mingling
with juicy strawberries in the makeshift fruit bowl.

Holding it since leaving Kyle135 long miles ago,
I relieved myself in the toilet bowl
—the one I’d apparently been using
all along on my periodic visits—though I really
didn’t remember how the toilet migrated
from bathroom to epicenter of their living room floor.

While urinating, I noticed two rather strange
looking insects, the size of my thumb, 
zipping and skipping like ballerina ice skaters
along the smooth confines of the toilet bowl.

Golden, amber insects, the size
of lubber grasshoppers
resembled Walt Disney caricatures.

Having considerable entomological
training, I was both puzzled and amused
by what I assumed to be Kim and Juliette’s newest pets.

Upon closer examination,
I decided these two golden beasties
must represent Formica urinasis,
the proverbial piss-ant.

MIASMA

Aquarius.
Aqueous world.
Crowded;
human population explosion.
Slaves,
to procreation.
Domed, metallic cities.
Built on titanium
steel pedestals.
Inhabited
by fools.
Nocturnally lit,
like nuclear Christmas trees.
Glowing in abject darkness.
Natural resources
raped, depleted, gone.
Smog, sludge.
Aquamarine Aquarius
not blue but brown.
A dismal floating mat
of bacterial water.
Growing exponentially.
Turning copper then orange,
then green and then red.
Budding and fruiting
polyps of myriad colors.
Bursting, dispelling spores
into a cloud like fog.
The mist rises
pink and poisonous.
Ever drifting.
Aquarius, a charnel house
of hazy pink.

Daniel G. Snethen resides in South Dakota and teaches science on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He coaches oral interpretation and drama and also is the publisher of Darkling.

He has had several poems published in various print and on-line magazines. His poetry has been published by Danse Macabre, Dark Gothic Resurrected, Deadman’s Tome, The Nocturnal Lyric, Scifaikuest, Thirteen Myna Birds and many others.