Poetry by Jeremy Nathan Marks

                              Matthew Paul Argall CC



​Wolves

I feel I must ask you 
to say the following word 
out loud: 

WOOL
VVVV
SSSUH

if you didn’t 
can you please 
do so now

WOOL
VVVV
SSSUH

politicians like to talk 
about lambs 
they like to talk about 
innocents 
they like to talk about 
norms and rules and politeness 
they like to talk about motherhood 
and family and justices who raise 
adopted babies from Haiti 
and do laundry while writing appeals 
court opinions and serving their husbands 

and they love their guns 
their cost-cutting measures 
they love their snares and traps 
they love the image of Daniel Boone
and Davy Crocket 

and how they do love to hate Wolves 

all my life Wolves 
Wolves 
have been the target
of aerial gunships and well 
fed hunters  
it seems as if senators 
and certain presidents 
were raised on a diet of Prokofiev
Peter and the Wolf from the cradle 
rather than Camille Saint-Saen’s 
Carnival of the Animals 

Wolves never have their day in court 
there are no allowances for their families 
their whelps are separated from their parents 
in killing floor facilities set up to traffic in interstate
commerce

politicians like to talk about Romulus 
and Remus 
portray themselves as 
Cincinnatus 
not as grocery store cutlet-buying 
city dwellers 
who have their meals prepared for them 
by domestics waiting to become
green card carrying resident aliens 

it is always mourning 
in america
for Wolves 

it is always about the hunter’s right 
to defend the border 
to hunt for pelts and meat 
to protect the second amendment 
while the unarmed Wolf 
is tazed then killed in a routine 

traffic stop 

by some Coyote wearing Wolf’s
clothing and making secret payments 
to the fraternal order of trophy hunters 

who stand upon their colonnaded 
front porches 
waving pistols 
and semi-autos 
at Wolves marching to city hall 
to ask for a living wage 
a cost of living adjustment
to stop killing us  

Wolves don’t vote red 
Wolves don’t vote blue 
they only have their wits 
to defend themselves 
from their own skins 
and militarized laws 
that would make refugees 
of them all 

except that there’s Covid 
and the borders are closed

and they shoot Wolves in canada, too. 

​
​

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in London, Ontario. New work appears this fall in The Last Leaves, Boog City, Unlikely Stories, So It Goes, Dissident Voice, The Journal of Expressive Writing, New Verse News, Ginosko Review, Chiron Review, and Bewildering Stories.

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