29 (The Trojan Mouse)

revenge is a woman of
wiles, an actor, a fighter,
a strategist,
engineer of a first rate
game of cat and mouse;
a game where the cat fails
to recognize the mouse

and the mouse grins like a
Cheshire, heads for
hell or the kitchen, or likely
Hell’s Kitchen, but surely
a long, long way past
gone from this place of
impossible probabilities,
where the land walks
upright, a steward of
itself

a long way past revenge,
and pseudo-safe to introduce
new people to the world,
leave the futures yet to pass back
there, at the other end of
the blood-red brick road
that leads to
Carpenter’s Farm

Poem by Shane Douglas Keene

READ THE SERIAL NOVEL BY JOSH MALERMAN