January 11, 2023
The Monster's Name
Any life gets dealt out
in breakneck fortune.
Coming no other way until,
as day leads on to day,
the desperate holder,
(confusing holding
for owning
the whole way)
has no choice,
no chance other
than to give it all away.
Precious holder
of place and time
knows all this
somewhere, maybe deep
and maybe not,
but certainly silenced by
skyscraper screens,
sincere eyes caressing
all there is that preens,
cave shadow things
that make any story
telling life was never ours
seem like careless
make believe.
So shush the children off to bed,
reminding them –
The monster’s name is never said.
​
___
© the author
by Zac Walsh
Zac Walsh’s work has appeared in journals such as Cimarron Review, Alligator Juniper, The Awakenings, The Charleston Anvil, Light/Dark, Inscape, Big Lucks, Lime Hawk, Spectre Magazine, Gulf Stream, the DuPage Valley Review, and The Platte Valley Review, as well as in the anthologies Blood on the Floor and Small Batch. He lives in a small, unincorporated town in California with his fiance and two very old dogs.