I’ve been thinking about roadkill and the way I don’t notice it
for more than the second it takes to swerve
around the bloodied body. I feel I should
feel worse about this—though I’d feel terrible if
I’d been the one at the wheel. I’ve been remembering
the scientist who stopped the car to pick up a vulture
carcass and brought it home to his freezer
as a fine specimen. A real shock for his wife
when she opened that door. I wonder if I
would react any better. I’ve been regretting
the dead deer, wishing I knew
butchery so the animal remains could be
put to use. I’ve been pondering cauterization
and how its hiss only takes away the danger
of bleeding out. I have avoided accidents so far.
The thing is, I don’t need to see one to imagine it:
the lights, the roar of the car barreling down
a once-safe road too fast for thought, for reaction.
I imagine to that animal it must have felt like
the future: vast, unstoppable, incomprehensible.
Gretchen Rockwell is a queer poet currently living in Pennsylvania. Xe is the author of the forthcoming microchapbooks Love Songs for Godzilla (Kissing Dynamite) and Thanatology (Ghost City Press); xer work has appeared in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Poet Lore, FOLIO, Okay Donkey, Moonchild Magazine, and elsewhere. Find xer at http://www.gretchenrockwell.com or on Twitter at @daft_rockwell.
