WEREWOLF HAIKU by Ryan Mecum

Remember ZOMBIE HAIKU, with all its humor and gorey details? Well, Ryan Mecum returns to that particular form with WEREWOLF HAIKU, in which a mild-mannered mailman is bitten by a (not) dog while on his daily rounds and finds himself a werewolf.

Turns out there are pros and cons to being a werewolf:

I can hear better,
even though both my ear holes
are clogged with whiskers.

Spiders have eight legs,
each of which I hear stomping
on my hardwood floors.

With heightened hearing,
current pop songs hurt my ears
more than they used to.

The poor mailman develops a unibrow and a lot of other hairy areas - ears, chest, tongue. And a tendency to chase cars and rabbits, howl at sirens, and hump legs. He's also become more of an attraction for dogs, which now follow him like the pied piper.


The descriptions of his killings and digestive issues are hideously nauseating, yet comical in a black sort of way:

When people eat corn
and spot them in their feces--
teeth are that way, too.

Pondering the classic children's tales involving wolves, he arrives at a number of amusing conclusions. I especially like this one:

Those three little pigs
would have been eaten too fast
for a fairy tale.

That ten-page story
should be a five-word sentence:
"A wolf eats three pigs."

His stalking of the girl he likes is creeeeeepy, and ends in a manner I didn't entirely expect, as does the book.