Adam Tavel
Wolves in the Maze
Dew-dazed in fog that floats through walls of trellised ivy, walls unclimbable and thrice my height, I wake again, shivering. The maze all ways a darker green, sky polished onyx, shadow-grasses thickening the deeper in I run, all breath, so light from hunger I only leave the air to kick the earth away. Those times I find at last the pup whose fur is storm, whimpering at thunder still far off, I dissolve kneeling for his leap. When instead sudden nearing paw-thuds catch me for their prey, so stealth I never glimpse the jaws that take me whole inside the wolf-lord, I fall again into his river caged by bone. Inside each run it glows the same, that panicked thirst, not knowing how hard to turn, or which us is us among those breathing corridors of ivy, towering into midnight. No barks or echoed barks or end of fog. No howl to answer with a howl.
The Invisible Countess
It was my uncle’s deathbed tale, for in his youth he worked among the palace sorrow. One December morning, during the war as he told it, they awoke to find the countess clear as air, though she could still dent cushions, and shriek, and fling vases like a banshee Cleopatra, yet all could see straight through her body, confused and real. For days it was a spell that made coachmen weep. Weeks of doctors turned to months. The countess became a book floating through her chamber, pages midair turning, while meals on silver trays cooled beyond her door. Uncle liked Sundays best, the break from dusting, the hymnal hum, how the village priest arrived clutching his silver pyx with both hands, as if it might float free and chase the clouds. The countess died inside a blizzard, waiting on final rites that froze in drifts, drifts monsignor tried to brave on foot. That spring it flashed inside his hands, my uncle said, to give them all some peace, as April does amid the thaw, with light upon blue fingers, a lidded cross, how bright the silver shone.
Adam Tavel is the author of six books of poetry, including Rubble Square (Stephen F. Austin State UP, 2022).