A Boy Shouts Help and this time the wolf is real. Real canine teeth. Real paws and fur. Warm breath and beating heart, pulse quickened at the scent of prey. But no one in the busy little village beneath the amber hillside dotted with sheep looks up from their toil to notice the slaughter. Somewhere a mother latches a sucking mouth to her naked breast. Outside some children chase each other around the well while a boy pumps water into a pail. An old man stoops low over his garden, a miller goes on turning grain at the grinding wheel, and a blacksmith rings the day’s rhythm into his glowing iron. We’re told that no one believes the liar, even when they’re telling the truth. But I think Aesop gets it all wrong – the story and its lesson. I think the people in that village are just like us. They hear the frightened shepherd every time. The children run inside. The mother locks the doors and shuts the windows. The miller and the blacksmith drop their tools to run wolf-crazed into the burning afternoon, torches glowing and pitchforks glinting in the sun. They know there’s no monster to be found, but the village needs a wolf to believe in as much as a bored and lonely boy needs them to believe in something dark and terrible prowling the shadows beyond the edge of the woods. Mausoleum – May 2016, Giza, Egypt. People forget the monument’s builders were not slaves. They revered Pharaoh, their god, enough to make the labor reasonable. An ample gratitude for the Nile. For miracle harvests of grain. An obedience to myth shown in these stones hewn from the quarry with blunt copper, stacked in steps to a golden ratio, now exposed where the smooth alabaster veneer submits to the rule of sand, grit, and time. When Pharaoh Khufu ordered the architect killed to bury knowledge of the tomb’s secrets, the man met his death with joy, our Egyptian guides tell us— apocryphal plot meets willing audience. Hollywood. 1955. Land of the Pharaohs, starring Jack Hawkins and Dame Joan Collins. Yet, the builder’s likeness carved into a tomb’s wall shows closed fists for the satisfaction of a life’s great work, completed at death. At the end of his life, the Pharaoh Hor-aha, named for the sky god Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris in the flesh, bore the glyph of a bird as his sign and compelled the sacrifice of thirty-six attendants. These chosen went to his grave over the horizon, honored to serve him in the next life. Their bones were found with the bones of lions.
Ben Weakley grew up in Clarksville, Tennessee and is a U.S. Army veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His first collection of poetry, HEAT + PRESSURE was published by Middle West Press in 2022. Ben’s poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won the 2019 Heroes’ Voices Poetry Award and the 2021 Col. Darron L. Wright Award from Line of Advance. His work is published in Sequestrum, Cutleaf Journal, and Wrath-Bearing Tree, among others. He lives in Kingsport, Tennessee with his wife, Stefanie, their two children, Abby and Jack, and one well-meaning, but poorly-behaved hound-dog named Camo.
Guest Editor Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 24 books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam’s Well, a novel; and The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body. Founder of Transformative Language Arts, she is offers writing workshops, coaching, and collaborative projects YourRightLivelihood.com with Kathryn Lorenzen, Bravevoice.com with Kelley Hunt, and TheArtofFacilitation.net with Joy Roulier Sawyer. CarynMirriamGoldberg.com.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 