Yorick

by Daniel G. Snethen

I stare into your eyeless sockets,

remembering how I used to torture thee.

How I’d make you carry me

barefoot through the creeping thorns

infesting the courtyard cobbles.

How I would beat the hump

on your back with my wooden club

urging you to greater speed.

You loved me poor Yorick,

and I treated you as less than a dog.

You were the court jester

and I of royal lineage.

Your disregard was my birthright.

You drug me from my castle room

when a fire raged mere feet from my door.

Dove out through a window

fifteen feet to the frozen ground.

Cracked your brainless skull

and broke your collar bone,

but cushioned my fall.

You watched over me,

entertaining me with silly feats

of acrobatic antics

as I lay sequestered away,

quarantined from the rest of humanity.

Ah Yorick, you were an idiot

to have loved me so,

and I, I was the royal buffoon.

Daniel G. Snethen is an educator, naturalist, moviemaker, poet, and short story writer from South Dakota. He teaches on the Pine Ridge Reservation at Little Wound High School in the heart of Indian Country. His best friend is his three-legged dog, Knightly, who is a cancer survivor.

Cindy Rosmus originally hails from the Ironbound section of Newark, NJ, once voted the “unfriendliest city on the planet.” She talks like Anybodys from West Side Story and everybody from Saturday Night Fever. Her noir/horror/bizarro stories have been published in the coolest places, such as Shotgun Honey; Megazine; Dark Dossier; The Rye Whiskey Review, Under the Boardwalk, and Rock and a Hard Place. She is the editor/art director of Yellow Mama and the art director of Black Petals. She’s published seven collections of short stories. Cindy is a Gemini, a Christian, and an animal rights advocate. She has recently branched out into photo illustration, under the guidance and mentoring of Ann Marie Rhiel.