In one of the winters without snow,

Leto gets knocked up. For a while, no one knows.

 

She hides her amber eyes under a black hoody

and hangs out with the goth kids,

 

purple fingernails reaching

from oversized sleeves.

 

Pretty mothers

yank their little boys back

 

from Leto’s bright sulkiness,

sparkling nose ring and ebony eyeliner.

 

Weeknights, Leto flashes her pungent adolescent

scent of potato chips, sweat and nicotine

 

as she romps through town

with the vixens

 

their music so loud, the ladies

at the market grimace while the girls laugh.

 

By spring, Leto is too wolfen

to hide under a sheepskin.

 

It was my uncle, my father, my god,

Leto howls,

 

as her mother chases her with a rolling pin

foam flicking around the word slut.

 

Leto gallops out and hides her whole swollen body

behind a single blade of grass.

 

The swans fly north, rising from mud

in assaults of grace.

 

For months, men in town jog into the river,

drawn by a green scent they can’t quite name,

 

while the meth dealer behind 7-11

rattles on and on about the woman

 

and the wolf cubs loping

across fields of sharpened light.