In good towns, good houses mourn what dies
outside by closing windows.
Bullfrog caught in a mower black-red. Driveway
chalk gray-red. Tire-tracked doe red-red.
Under a sycamore my throat whirls from pity to
nausea. The suburban sky does nothing, sees less.
Another small chest deflates at the edge of my vision
before gas tank heaves & gut tries to follow.
The angel on my left shoulder finds something of
interest in the windshield blur of road then red,
body then blood. He bites my ear, pulls hard
my lashes. Look, he insists, where I point.
Where shells split. Where color leaks. Look, he
demands. My own palms spangled with crime.
He walks across my blades & drags a fleshy bone
behind him. In lurid dreams I resurrect them all,
or they refuse to leave, guilt dressed as clemency.
A frog or my fingers, the blade always a blade.
In good towns, good children collapse
snake holes, heel away ant hills for sport.
Above us, a grey-necked warbler shrieks & shrieks,
trills a humdrum dirge for these ordinary deaths.
I drive on, bound by time. He sings, knitted
to his perch on a telephone wire, eyes
fixed to each body I blur past, blooming car
after car like poppies on pool water, red.
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