I’ve learned to learn the street by sound,
a candy wrapper snipering the gutter in a wind,
an owl faltering on the imitation belfry over the ocean.
Her tail feathers tip up as she listens to her fog horn echo–
another owl calling across from another house, smooth as a plane
threading a thunder cloud. There are three sounds, and so many stars.
Maricela says the leg they gave her husband’s brother
was so badly made that it was no wonder he couldn’t
walk with it. Not to be outdone, Adelaide says her cousin
was drunk when she chewed Adelaide’s rabbit’s leg off.
“I was laughing,” she says, “We both were, when my cousin
pretended to eat the severed leg.” “What was she on?” I ask.
Adelaide doesn’t know. She says the vet put a metal clamp
on the stump, but they can pay five hundred dollars for a plastic foot,
so the rabbit will be able to walk again. The boy sitting next to her says
his dog died yesterday. Do I want to see a picture of his dog?
“Is it dead in the picture?” “Sleeping,” he says, and he shows me
the dog, which is young and clearly dead, lying on his side,
his fur black and moist and curling. At night I listen for the herons,
a creaking that never comes, but as the owl calls fade behind me,
a long and arduous scream passes over me in the dark.
Michelle Mitchell-Foust is the author of two books of poetry, Circassian Gir and Imago Mundi, both published by Elixir Press. She is currently co-editing Monstrous Verse, an anthology that has been accepted for publication by Everyman Press, forthcoming in 2013. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The Washington Post, Antioch Review, The Colorado Review, Columbia, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and The Denver Quarterly.
*Photo courtesy of meantux.