Roadkill Poem

Look there on the side of the road!
(Please choose one or more adjectives)
A bloated, pancaked, bashed to bits,
squished, maggot ridden, rotten,
stinky,
poor,
little
(please choose one or,
if it has been a particularly tragic night
in the animal kingdom, more nouns)
squirrel, opossum, woodchuck, rabbit,
deer, songbird, seagull, turtle! How sad!

Look there on the side of the road!
A dead racoon, muskrat, fox! How sad!
Sad? Bullshit…
My grandfather saw dollar
signs and fur coats. The
pelts stretched and drying
before the sun set.
Roadkilled deer was free
meat. And it beat freezing
feet, trudging shotgun woods
in howling, snowing Decembers.
The Lawd provides in mysterious ways!

Look there on the side of the road!
A hippopotamus killed in a
collision with a unicycle! How sad!

And now…a short,
bitter, elegiac lament.

Please place the back of your
hand across your forehead
like a swooning silent
film star as you
read this:

Woe! O woe! O woe!
See there on the side of the road
cute, furry, fuzzy, lovable
Mother Nature
crushed beneath Man’s tyrrany of
rubber, asphalt, progress, technology
and suburban sprawl. How sad!

Is it wrong to laugh about roadkill?
Probably, but until these poets
jilt their cars and take to their feet
or
until one of their readers actually
plies the byways less frequently for
the express purpose of saving critters,
I reserve the right to laugh. Not
so much about roadkill, but about
the folly of roadkill poetry.

Ladies and gentlemen, yes, while it’s
true, the world is trending toward
abject fear, terror and chaos.
Here’s a poem about
dead bunnies on
the road.
Idiots.

Anyway…
I have now fulfilled requirement
37A toward my inclusion in
the pantheon of modern,
American poet.

Now…to write a poem about 9/11.

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