[Matt Q]

After the wolf-thing eats him

After the wolf-thing eats him, after it shits
the parts of him that yield no sustenance
back out into the world, how come he thinks
he’s been reborn? He clearly is a dunce,

this chap. And yet – see how he skips along
without his skin. The weight he’s lost! The awful
weight of turgid flesh, see how that’s gone,
as if his world’s no longer made of offal.

But though he glides discarnate through the room,
all lipless grins, who really could suppose
he had won free, this bodiless buffoon?
Yet how relaxed he seems without his bones.

We steel ourselves. This surely will get nasty.
We hang around the wolf-thing, looking tasty.
.

[Glenn Wright]

I’ve heard of some drastic weight-loss programs, but being eaten by a wolf wins the cigar!
I like the slant rhymes, and am particularly fond of “awful/offal.” I also think “discarnate” is a jewel. I did wonder, though, about the bones. Wouldn’t they have survived the digestion process?

[Rick Mullin]

Matt,
This is really good. I am just going to say, quickly, that your slant rhyming is just amazing!
RM

[R. S. Gwynn]

awful/offal gets my prize. The weight/weight rep could be improved. Even turgid gut sounds like something.

[John Riley]

This is damn good. It is no one else's voice. It's unique to you.

I will be back to read it more and may have something to say. Right now I don't see anything but more praise but if anything clicks I'll let you know.

Great work, Matt.

[Julie Steiner]

Fantastic, in every sense of the word.

I do wonder about rhyming "shits" with "thinks," but I guess it works as more of a conceptual rhyme than a phonetic one.

[David Callin]

Matt, I'm having some trouble discerning the logic of the process that's occurred here, and what it is that has actually come back as "him", with no bones, no flesh and no skin, but what you do with it, as a poem, is great. I too like the nifty slant rhymes.

Why the three l's? Is that significant, or just a fun frill on your part?

Cheers

David

[Matt Q]

Susan and David,

Many thanks both!

David,

After have the parts of him that give the wolf sustenance have been digested, the rest of him is shat back out into the world, and then he claims to have been reborn. So, there's a suggestion that he's that which has (re)emerged into the world, and the rest of him has been consumed/digested/absorbed by the wolf-thing. If we take this literally, we wouldn't expect him to be made of flesh or skin or bones. I guess you might expect bone fragments in carnivore faeces, but not bones per se, or flesh or skin. And besides, this is a wolf-thing. A carnivore, for sure, but not necessarily a member of the natural world. More metaphorically, I was thinking that it's a transformation of sorts.

On "wullluf", it could well have been a typo or I might have thought it looked good at the time. I needed a false title for the thread to hide the real ones from search engines, so it probably only got a few seconds thought.

best,

Matt

[Mark McDonnell]

Hi Matt,

"When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose" as Dylan once sang. I feel this chap to have been ravaged by the 'wolf-thing' called life, whether materially or in terms of emotional or mental strain, to such an extent that he is left with nothing, and yet ultimately finds some strange liberation in this. "His world's no longer made of offal" suggests some kind of spiritual transcendence beyond the flesh. The poem is darker and more sly than that interpretation suggests, though. We don't really know what he is thinking or feeling, we only have the speculations of the speaker/onlooker. And the closing couplet is deliciously sinister, with the suggestion that being devoured by the wolf-thing is an inevitability that we have to "steel ourselves" against. Maybe not all of us will survive the wolfish crucible as well as this chap. If indeed, he did.

It made me smile and it made me think. And as John says, it transported me to your own unique voice-world.

Mark

[Matt Q]

Hi Mark,

Many thanks! I'm always interested to know how people read my poems, and you're the first to do so for this poem. I like your reading of this. I'd actually seen the close as a culmination of the onlookers' speculation. Has has achieved liberation or not? In the end they decide they want what he's got, and so they hang around the wolf-thing looking tasty -- hoping to be eaten, knowing it'll be painful/messy. I hadn't seen the close could be read the way you did, but I do now, and I like that that reading too.

best,

Matt