Pulling Away

I would have gladly hurled myself
into you, your warm maw,
had I not seen
(an instant or two
before it would have been too late)
the glint of a feral hunger in your eyes,
a kind of animal desperation
at the corners of the your mouth.

So, I pulled away
and, pulling away,
looked about the room
for something made of silver.

In case you've never heard of him (and he doesn't expect that you have), Steven Utley is the author of two collections of verse issued by Anamnesis Press, This Impatient Ape (1998) and Career Moves of the Gods (2000). He's also the author of two story collections, Ghost Seas (1997) and The Beasts of Love, forthcoming from Wheatland Press, and of the perennially soon-to-be-finished Silurian Tales, comprising a couple of dozen loosely connected stories originally published in Asimov's, F&SF, Sci Fiction, etc. The Beasts of Love will mark his initiation into print-on-demand publishing -- another strain on his last-century sensibilities.

Find more by Steven Utley in the Author Index.

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