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You Don’t Call It Roadkill

By Madeline Marks
you_don't_call_road_kill

Illustration by Damehi Laloo

I learned to circulate car air

on rural Georgia backroads

or dead raccoon like shaved rubber

and raw sausage will heat the AC.

I call it weed or skunk. You call it

something you can’t remember.

You’re not in a hurry to. I imagine

you’d call it half dead fish on pier boards,

smacking it to sleep. Or lazy stinking creek.

Or maybe bird feathers, high

and gray and triumphant.

Maybe you’d call it younger wonder years,

splayed out on hot pavement, grease

and gravel on Achilles heel, leeches

on your calves, and ticks behind your ears.

But back then it smelled like mushrooms

and cedar and mossy water, how bark

canoes pass under rope swings.

When the smell is gone and the hush of trees

hit chug of truck to drone me to sleep, you wipe

bugs off the windshield so I won’t see them.

I imagine it all sits like pebbles

in your mind, wet and unassuming. Dead

bugs, dead raccoons, and how I don’t like

dead things. I’d move worms off concrete

and throw hooked fish back to make it go

away, but for you, it’s all one big life.


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Posted On: December 1, 2022
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