Excerpts from “WOLF TOURS”

WOLF TOURS Radio Ad

we’ve lost our protected status 	but not our capitalist goals!	      we’ve lost our 

    minds	       with prices like these        	in 60 years we’ve killed      only two 

             of you		we care like no other             and demand to know the difference

between care and love		we are not being rhetorical! 	      we hunt to eat and

	leave charitably the rest	            for strangers	moose and elk have killed 

far more than we	  we are job creators!       	    by targeting the weak and old
	
       we keep entire populations healthy!	       our numbers are improving		 

   take a look    at our books!    we will never stop     preventing          over-grazing

we are the regulatory system	     you always dreamed of          we also offer tours


WOLF TOURS Magazine Ad

Our loyal customers never contract tapeworm and never go extinct. Now only: three for the price of five. Have you ever wanted all your dreams to come true? Have you been seeking a genuine, authentic, guaranteed wolf experience? Deep in the scary night have you ever dreamed of watching two friends cut off their own heads and then dispose of their own bodies using hydrofluoric acid? On your next Wolf Tour, we CAN and we WILL talk about this. We WILL apply a Jungian interpretation, which holds that you should “CHOOSE A NEW WAY OF BEING IN THE WORLD.” We WILL say provocative things like “by all means kill yourself but DO NOT HARM YOUR BODY!” We maintain that mistaken literalism is the greatest tragedy of dreams.

WOLF TOURS Internal Memo Re: Trash Incident

“Autumn Underwater”: 
this month’s featured side-tour 
gone awry, quarantined early on 
by the Office of Ocean Pollution Safety.  
	
Uniquely damaged, even 
by our own colorful standards. 
Refunds are processing, Yelp apologies 
pre-typed. Truthfully, we misunderstood 

reports about the trash 	
vortex and its speed and acceleration. 
We were never strong in math. We are deeply
regretful; we despair in our miscalculation. We used to 

imagine ourselves capable
only of good. The stingrays like to nestle
in the snorkelers’ arms. One small touch can’t kill 
the whole reef. We used to stay up picturing the sea alone at night.


WOLF TOURS: Day Eleven

The clients receive letters from loved ones—
the ones still living in cages. With the end
of the Tour approaching, they begin 
to admit the origins of their sadness.
The limits of a single life, and the warrants
this entails. Or birth in the wrong era—
too early by a century. The impossibility
of obtaining all, and each acquisition 
a reminder of the lack. But letters are not 
ancient enough, so they turn instead to the lupine
way. When the night falls down they lift it
back up again, heads tipped and watching
for what they know is behind the clouds.


WOLF TOURS: Day Thirteen

Two by two they pray 
on the mountain peak,

establishing something 
mysterious and lifelong. 

Every client is different, 
every tour the same.

They sing and recite 
their rituals, promise 
	
their bonds and bind their 
promises. Will they still

remember in ten years? 
What about a hundred?	

The Earth was never 
meant to last. Every turn

complicates without 
revealing a thing. 

This is the gift of the Tour,
or one of them. Yes 

to the withdrawn 
confession, yes to 

the silenced truth. 
If you can’t see 

the sentiment, 
it must exist everywhere.

Your crustacean 
heart so thick

its beats look 
only like shaking.  

By Alyse Knorr