Cry Wolf by Adrienne J. Odasso

after Bisclavret, by Marie de France

What that uppity Norman bitch will never tell you
is that he stank to high heaven just home from the hunt,
left muddy footprints on the painted tiles in my parlor,
and drank till the cider was gone. What was I to do
but trap him, see to it that the brute lost his armor
in favor of claws? Even my father’s hawking mutts
knew better than to dribble on the floor. Small wonder
the King took him in, for one animal will always
know another—and heaven help him if it had been
the Queen who’d got savaged instead! What would the court
have said, what when his noseless firstborn daughter made
her first mask? And what of my own daughters, joyless,
deprived of the green scent of spring, of summer flowers
I knew once, but that they can never guess? Just for sport,
Highness, I wish you’d hunted him, chased him senseless
before the kill. I wonder if he’d have changed then, but now

he never will.

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Adrienne J. Odasso is currently completing her Ph.D. in English at the University of York. Her poetry has appeared in a number of publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including Strong Verse, Aesthetica, Sybil’s Garage, Succour, Farrago’s Wainscot, The Liberal, and Mythic Delirium, with new work forthcoming in Illumen. Her e-chapbook, Dead Zones, was published by Gold Wake Press in 2008. Her first print chapbook, Devil’s Road Down, will be published by Maverick Duck Press in September 2009, and her first book-length collection, Lost Books, will be published by Flipped Eye Press in Winter 2010.

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Image: German woodcut, 1722.