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.
