Neighborhood List
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I’ve heard it’s howl all week, and now it’s online,
the local Chupacabra. In the photo
a brownish hulk slumps against an oak,
something between fox and wolf. Just down
the road, I know that tree. So I go looking,
phone at the ready, but there’s nothing.
I look at the list again. The beast is skinny,
big enough, but slouching in the shade.
Maybe it’s a transplant from some
wilder world, less evolved, where you’d see it
hunching with dripping jaws over prey,
eating armadillo on the half-shell.
It isn’t dangerous looking, balding
and mangy. Area on alert
until someone manages to sneak up on it
and get a close-up. Vet school says
it’s just an old coyote. I am disappointed.
I’d rather be afraid of something unreal
that’s definitely there, than all these
dire possibilities—Covid, cancer, Russia,
Alzheimer’s and crazies with M1s.
I never did credit Chupacabras, still the photo
was convincing enough, and I will keep
my dogs inside now until further notice.
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Janet McCann
Janet McCann, is from College Station, Texas. Journals publishing Janet McCann’s work include Kansas Quarterly, Parnassus, Nimrod, Sou’wester, America, Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, New York Quarterly, Tendril, and others. She has written four poetry books and six chapbooks. Her most recent poetry book: The Crone at The Casino (Lamar University Press, 2014) She taught at Texas A&M for 47 years. She lives with her dogs, Marple and Poirot, and writes copiously about them.
