Seven women roam a caldera in the mountains.

One starred in a ‘90s sketch comedy—wigged

damsel Fabio strummed the lute for. One knows

how arms at sea say, Save me, above the waves

and below; her red one-piece’s cut grooves

her legs like the grooves in a unicorn’s horns.

One is a magician’s assistant. One is Ace

Ventura’s girlfriend. Two are sisters on Full House.

One, an actress who served in my school canteen,

stands a head taller than the rest, neck choke

-chained gold. Down on the flatlands, a villager

gleans the scent. He climbs, and looks. The formation

resembles a deer hoof. I’m the leg. I maneuver

the hoof to a lakeshore, swim it to an island castle.
                                        •
The villager swims the lake. Enters the castle.

His body hair drains. He can’t feel his bruises

swell, yellow, but it happens. The bruises are lust

in the way that skin is lust. Hunger too. The bruises

are what his famished village has made of him,

a wandering wound, a balm seeker. Tennis balls

in the guttering when as a boy I’d scale the roof

to retrieve them, felt rain-flayed and soiled to

rags: this is his indigence dress in the darkness

of the great hall. There is one light source—

a mirror, backlit as if with moonlight. Wedged

behind, edging from the bottom, is a scroll.

A kingdom and more for he who slays the ghost

that cannot be slain, whose terror hour is midnight.
                                        •
… that cannot be slain, whose terror hour is midnight.

Were the villager literate, he would have read

this, run. But the myth doesn’t vest him such power,

nor does a negotiable summons thrill out my chest

hair by the root. He climbs again, up to a garret.

Lights the table candle. Everywhere, the grace of recent

movement: tomes on werewolves, frogs, and dragons

lie open as if just perused, tassels chewed, stroked;

the candle wax is soft and skin-warm; cobwebs

stream off a globe of Earth; shadow cobwebs stream

off the globe’s shadow. Between a unicorn’s eyes

streams a lone hair, long as a boy is tall—omniscience

and invulnerability in war to whoever plucks it.

Then, the door, wrought of water, not iron, bursts.
                                        •
Wrought of water, not iron, the garret door bursts.

On the threshold stands a Cyclops. The villager

sees, in that yawning singularity, a servant’s quarters

or carriage house in which the captives huddle. Come!

Come! It may be a bedroom. Are there bite marks

in the bunk wood? Is Mars’ light jaundiced on the ceiling?

It may be a bathroom. Are there razor sheathes

stuck in the heating vent, like truths between teeth?

Nail lines in the grout mould, toy-soldier-green?

The Cyclops attacks. The villager spears its pupil

with the table candle, and from that tumult of sun

-beams and roars carves two perfect halves, which fall.

Out of the split drifts a voice: the damsel. Kiss the gold

to claim the gold. The women envelop the villager.
                                        •
The women envelop the villager. The women

whirled Earth and its shadow. The women, who

were hidden, flare—solar flares. The villager

shields his eyes. The women laugh and bleat and bawl.

In front of the villager sways the actress.

The villager kisses her choker: lips, tongue, teeth.

Her swoon upraises purple smoke, and antlers.

As the smoke settles, seven deer emerge. The deer

bolt the garret. Rather than bask in the blazing

corona that will save his crops, feed him, the villager

dons hunting camouflage. The camo pattern

matches his bruises, as if by design. The masking—

a balm. Need supplants wound—a need I need to hunt.

There is no point, no time. Seven caldera deer run.