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.