Evocation

Vincent Hostak

September 15, 2024

 for Sylvia Plath

I mistook him for a man:

the coyote leaning on a trash bin

I carelessly took to the street without its lid

not knowing what I’d evoke.

Others encircled a rabbit on a distant lawn.

It was as if he strutted away from the game,

spine upright, stately on two legs.

I watched his hands probe and lance,

saw a surgeon above an open chest

emerging with a tender melon in his clutches.

Then on all fours he was coyote again

his whiskers heavy with the pale fruit’s blood,

his clumsy mouth casting seeds everywhere.

Before peeling away in a flash of headlights

he left a trail of melon skin 

like a fairy circle now greying in the sun.

I step around them on my walk, unsure

even in the safety of bright noon sunlight.

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.