Roadkill

You kept them cooped up,
ripening in their cigarette packets.
Fleshless, cracked and empty shells,
breathless rodent jaws, a rabbit’s
sun-bleached, eviscerated skull –
transient roadkill the dogs dragged in.

Yet once clambering out
from your driver’s seat,
you stood fawn-helpless and mesmerized
by the oil-slick glow of tail-light,
staring at the obliterated viscous form
you’d laid public by the kinetic highway,
shamefully still on the desecrate
nettle-bed. Splayed, steaming, still bounding –
re-bounding on its side. Fallen pilgrim
on this road to Damascus.

And so, you let loose the dogs to tear
the remains of this nightly exodus
off the dented metal grill
as though the flesh of Jezebel.

© A.T. 2020