& out the bars, out our beds, we take the streets -- all of them

a pack of dark bodies, animal, wolf monsters, feral canines

with sharp teeth, senses wild. we smell our enemies’

self-aggrandizing spittle from miles, we’ve heard every pitchy dog whistle

& this is our coming, since you called.

the moon’s out & my bitches is wolves,

are a thick, choking night. black like YOU can’t breathe. no more.

you hunters think you own the dark with your guns

& your traps: concrete, ideological…

but the dark, the dark is your head in the mouth of the beast

you tried to muzzle. the cage, is whatever side of the bars

we’re not on.& we’re still loud,  & we’re still hungry.

cross mine & we make a meal of you & your money

& your monopolies

the moon is a circle perfect as our formation bright in the sky

& all my bitches are howling a battle cry, we are wolves

& those who are not wolves, who you stole or hurt

or broke before, are ghosts, are screaming too.

a violent noise that haunts your every hour & makes you

want to claw yourself apart before we do & those who are not ghosts

are back. two fold. we, an unkillable hydra

look! for every one of us you tried to stop

there are double here in their place. my god, you see

ain’t it funny what would happen to you

if we turned into the monsters you’ve made us out to be?

the moon is out. my bitches are alive. are the warning of the nights we thought would never belong to us. with loud breath

& syncopated heart beat. hear us. beat. howl. beat. close in. beat.

feast. beat. do you feel that? beat. that tingle

on the back of your ashen neck? huh?

we’re coming. since you called.

Louisiana-born slam champion Jae Nichelle (she/her) is the author of God Themselves (Andrews McMeel, 2023) and the chapbook The Porch (As Sanctuary) (YesYes Books, 2019). A graduate fellow of The Watering Hole, Jae won the inaugural John Lewis Writing Award in poetry from the Georgia Writers Association and was a finalist for a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. Her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2020, the Washington Square Review, The Offing, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere