Joellen Craft
Out Running
Hot enough to taste
the air, something rotten, and the swell
of cut grass in my throat. By the log pile,
my urine soaked into the gravel. Dust covers
me, like the roadside
detritus, the severed claw absurdly clenched,
the tampon wrapped in plastic: dry,
waiting. There's yelling. It's two girls
bent over a porch rail.
What?
They yell again. What?
Don't stop, keep running.
OK.
One holds a rounded little
girl pot belly. One who turns
away will soon be lovely. Their kiddie pool
will take too long to fill, will,
abandoned, brim and trickle:
that all small bodies
could be filled and filled—
when empty, flipped
to cover bald dirt.
Raccoon Decapitated Near Drainage Ditch
The blue blood hammers in my ears, then bubbles
thick into the dust. Stars poked in the broken
shell horizon spray above my head
as it rolls to rest, facing East.
The red taillights blink away.
There's silence
for the first time, and no breath, just the twin suns
of an oncoming truck breaking
over the rounded hillock
of my body. There, by the ditch, its honest
browns light up, now bronze, now amber, gold.
At once the full clean glory rushes past...
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