Ken Poyner in Hello Horror: On the Side of the Law

ON THE SIDE OF THE LAW

by KEN POYNER

I hope you’ve got your hobgoblin

Shoveling out all the witch ash.

It builds up, chokes off the air:

The fires grow less spectacular,

The witches go at a slower burn,

The public dares sympathy.

We can have none of that.

Judgment is as right as rain.

Lay aside a wheelbarrow

Of witch for the back garden.

Tell your hobgoblin to filter out

The bones, turn over the loam

And let good air into the earth

To purify every endeavor a man

Can - with soil and the sense

To make it more fertile - lawfully

Commit. Tell him

That if the load is good, the work

Smart and the sign of him scarce,

On the back window sill

Baked in a sweet sauce and the best crust

A commoner in a nobleman’s kitchen can make,

I’ll leave the kneaded denials

Of this week’s harvested summer changelings;

And no one will notice if,

Pie tin and all, it gets caught up in his leaving.

endmark

Ken Poyner lives in the lower right hand corner of Virginia, with his power-lifter wife and a number of house animals. His 2013 e-book, “Constant Animals”, unruly fictions, is available at all the usual e-book sites; buy it, and feel good about saving jobs in the brewing industry. Recent work is out in Corium, Analog Science Fiction, Spittoon, Poet Lore, Mobius and many other places. He webs at www.kpoyner.com, where you can find links to purchase his book, more work, and stunning pictures of his wife lifting. Ken's poem, The Stray Marriage, appears in the October 2014 issue of HelloHorror and his poem Industry appears in the Spring 2015 issue.

The authors published at HelloHorror retain all rights to their work. For permission to quote from a particular piece, or to reprint, contact the editors who will forward the request. All content on the web site is protected under copyright law.