The Shifters

Contributor: Ed Ahern

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The creatures of the night
don’t lurk in woods and mansions.
They cave in cubicle and condo
until their sunset bat flights
to score drugs and hookups.
They shift not shape but being
into things denied by day.
Their eyes, rheumed at three o’clock
bear witness to misshapings.
Their smiles are the crumpled wrappers
of what they’ve smoked or drunk.
These creatures of the night
skulk outside themselves and simper.
They’ve escaped into the darkness.


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Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He's had a hundred eighty poemsand stories published so far, and three books.