The Hyena Queen

She was a pretty hipster, hair mohawked
like a black mane of jagged crests,
and her laughter was shrill as she walked
into the club, leading her pack with her breasts
bouncing in rhythm to the DJ’s dubstep track,
heading first to the neon watering hole
for a drink, every dude gawping and stepping back
as if he feared the loss of his heart and his soul.
She ordered margaritas, licking the salt
and leaning on the bar as she coolly eyed
the dark jungle of the room, the gestalt
of the animals in their herd, grinding side to side.
Her pack looked wild and hungry, their thighs
paw-printed with tattoos, and their painted faces
gleaming with piercings, their black-rimmed eyes
hinting at Punk Rock, and elephant graveyard places.
A young man approached, eyes like a gazelle’s—
big, dark, innocent, full of frenzied flight
before she disemboweled him, spilling his entrails
with high-pitched laughter full of scorn and spite.
Her pack’s cruel, giggling glee then rang out
to silence the grazing grounds, the thunderous savanna
dropping down-tempo as she shoved her snide snout
through his guts, and his genitals, the young man a
carcass now, eviscerated on the dance floor
as her pack enjoined in the kill, tearing him apart
long after he had fled through the exit door
with whatever remained of his mangled heart.
Her pack then hunted their own prey,
seeking the stragglers, the loners, the lost
upon the edges—those who wanted a day
of excitement to remember, even at great cost.
Wobbly-legged calves, newborn and chaste;
old grey beasts, single and lonely;
straight, gay, bi, pan: grazers of whatever taste,
they were all led astray by the lunatic laughter only
to be torn apart, shredded, heaped up in a pile
by this pack of predators, their laughter wild and petty
as they fed themselves on the dignity of others while
dubstep storms blew over the savage Serengeti.