by Lilith Acadia
Monsters taller than a house or loblolly pine
indeed smothering cul-de-sacs and forests whole,
taller even than a nine-year-old’s midnightmares
after watching Godzilla while the sitter slept:
these monsters, swaying loomed over the drive
past haunted Savannah to shark-tooth-littered coast
arms extended nonchalant, swaddling power lines
claws must crackle static like a predator’s glance
through faces obscured in their own sloppy hunger
mouths devouring throat, chin, nose that knows no eyes,
all because settlers heeded some radio host’s
hubristic quick fix for fur-staining red Georgia
clay sliding away under over-tilled soil or
barn gutter drips carving canyons, birthing monsters.
Lilith Acadia is a lit professor at National Taiwan University, Taiwan Literature Base 2024–2025 Writer-in-Residence, and Pushcart-nominated member of the Taipei Poetry Collective with poetry in JMWW, New Orleans Review, Strange Horizons, trampset, and elsewhere. She lives with her wife and hound in the ‘literature mountain’ district of Taipei. Connect on Instagram, Twitter, Bluesky: @acadialogue.
Emerge Literary Journal 