Open Throat by Henry Hoke

Author:Henry Hoke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

even when I leave the park the park comes with me

the burn smell stays on my fur and in my nose and the trees continue and get split by the curving street and stand tall on either side and I choose the side with the most green and hug the hedges and try to go fast

there are buildings here much bigger and stronger than the tents in town and their doors are hard not soft

they go up and up almost as tall as the trees

I hear a car approaching and I disappear into a thick hedge

two men step out of the car and they make noise with long sticks that end in spinning blades like tiny fucking helicopters and they stand across the street and drag the blades across the hedges sending pieces of green flying up in the air

it’s so green here

how

I bury myself deeper in case the men get tired of their hedge and attack mine

but they don’t

when the spinning goes away I look out and see two small hikers

a man and a woman I know from the park

they step over the huge roots that pop out of the ground on their way up the hill

don’t they get that the park isn’t safe now

they stop in front of me like they heard my thoughts like they heard my warning

you know who lives there says the woman and she points across the street to the building beyond the trimmed hedge that’s slaughter’s house

the man takes a big swig from his water bottle and says oh fuck really I love slaughter or y’know I loved him he’s like a legend

yeah says the woman but his wife is younger than you

gross says the man

gross yeah says the woman but fully typical

they continue to walk uphill toward danger and there’s nothing I can do to stop them

I look at the house where they pointed

the name slaughter sounds good to me

like something I could do

like somewhere I belong

I nap until night and wake to a car coming to life and pulling out from in front of the slaughter house

the car lights blind me for a sec and when I can see again I cross the street and crawl through the trimmed hedge and into the thick green grass

water sprays up out of small holes in the ground and I drink until I hear another car

I run around the side of the house into an even larger grassy area in the back

when I get there I see a girl in a cloak on her knees lit by a blue lantern in a circle of sparkling stones and she holds a bowl and the bowl pushes smoke into the air

she lays the bowl on the ground in front of her and puts her head down so the cloak covers everything except her long hair and her long hair spills and licks the grass like a flame

it’s a color I didn’t think I could see until now

she keeps her head down and I sneak by and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.