CAINSDÓTTIR / JIM RYAN
The wolf woman takes out the last of her curlers,
puts her slippered feet up on the coffee table.
Well-fed, she settles in for a lazy morning.
If those sons of Ask and Embla don’t want her
eating them, they shouldn’t taste so good. She waits
for the meathead boy to show up and kill her—
it is written in the old words, the words only she
and her son Grendel can read. And, of course
her father, wherever he wanders—last she knew
he was whoring in Greece, bleeding those young grapes
with his teeth. He gave her his lethal limbs,
and his mark: the hatred of men. Her warm coat
is her own, covering her hominid body, amber
and gray—her canine head, streaked with onyx.
The rain hammers hard enough to dull her view
of the street, cascades down the glass of her windows
in sheets. She imagines her cousin, the Kraken
undulating in those waters, her progeny,
the piranhas, a storm of glorious fangs, and mighty
Fenrir, who will one day strip the flesh of gods.
Oh, Grendel. Her child, his lifeless body rests
in the corner by the china cabinet.
The bloody stump of his arm flowers against the teal
wallpaper. Finally, the door she never locked bursts
open and the slayer stands framed on the welcome mat.
Lighting cracks, illuminates an unpleasant
bit of fuzz on his upper lip. He looks to the sword,
the heirloom mounted on the wall over the loveseat—
he’s big, but does he know how to use it? She does
not lean forward to reveal the supple fur
on the back of her neck. She sneers at him dripping there
and waits, her eyes the imperious
orange of the sun over saltwater—every gyre
of her hair a challenge, an invitation to try.
Jim Ryan teaches and writes in the Finger Lakes region of New York. His work has appeared in Typehouse, Gandy Dancer, and Possibilities Publishing Company’s anthology contest, Besties, Bromances & Soulmates. When he isn’t writing, he is a gamer, mac and cheese connoisseur, and cat concierge.