Just them and the doe and a wrecked two-door truck, the metal
and her body braided. They are digging bloody honey-suckle
at a forest-side— where the woods bunch in the ditch. It is here
that one asks: what has a field ever said? The field said: graveyard.
Strip mall. Meadow. Said landfill, a gash dirt packed. The other:
dump, like I’m taking a dump like who’d want to live in this dump like
don’t dump your problems on me. Like an unwanted kitten someone
dumped on a highway divider, on a hundred-degree day, early August.
Where they saw her trying to jam her two-pound body down
a sewer grate. Where they stopped the truck, one scooped her up.
Now she basks in the sun, black suede body stretched out
on the dash of their truck. Stalks mice in adjacent fields during calls.
Fishes for slimy minnows in drainage ditches, slurps her paws.
WLS is a poet. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University Bloomington. Her first book, Psychogynecology, was published by Monster House Press in 2015. Her work can be found many places, including poets.org and The Portland Review. Other poems about The Dogcatchers can be found in the anthology Undeniable, published by Alternating Currents Press.
