A few years ago, the online journal Wag’s Revue published my poem “The Deer Problem”, about the sinister side of suburban wildlife management. It contains the lines “Men arrived in unmarked trucks./We were told to clear the area for that day.//They were delivering crates of wolves.” Longtime Winning Writers subscriber and Internet friend R.T. Castleberry asked permission to use the image in one of his poems. As you’ll see, he truly made it his own. I’m happy to share it with my readers below.

A Pushcart Prize nominee, R.T. Castleberry is an internationally published poet and critic. He was a co-founder of the Flying Dutchman Writers Troupe, co-editor/publisher of the poetry magazine Curbside Review, an assistant editor for Lily Poetry Review and Ardent. His work has appeared in The Alembic, Blue Collar Review, Misfit, Roanoke Review, Pacific Review, White Wall Review, Silk Road and Trajectory. Internationally, he’s had poetry published in Canada, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Portugal. the Philippines and Antarctica. He lives and writes in Houston, Texas.

Dawn Came, Delivering Wolves

In clubs like Ghost,
like Corsair, like Shred
we punish our rye, sardonic as the war.
Office lights, like captions,
shine color and intent, streaking
signals into the night.
As slide guitar smear overdrives a bass,
outside speakers shiver patio tables.
Cellphone anarchists hawk
Free Zone passage, hound
soldiers staging for weak retreat.

Hungry, determined, river rangers
muscle a path from barricade to back bar.
Queasy from steam table sterno,
they settle for Tecate and nachos,
squall of a martial mixtape.
EMS drivers cluster in a low light corner,
uniforms dusty rescuing refugees from the Wires.
They count the few casualties as consolation.
Post-edit, news crews gang the tables,
tipping back Red Stripe and Japanese gin,
refreshing their taste for next day’s damage.

Up the block,
the train runs on the hour,
headlights blaring white in its passage.
Late walkers circle away from sidewalk crowds,
roll Bugler smokes on bus stop benches
The photos posted in the bar credit
actors in uniform, in military roles.
Like the world was indoors dark,
we huddle under Airborne berets,
rolling instance of combat videos.
Numbering nights—luminous, brittle,
years pass hard.