This poem was published in the June 2022 issue of The Blotter.
“Rural Wake”
At the rains' end, The farmhand carried two dead mice From the barn but Its two citizens in their stalls Among dry, warm shavings didn't care to notice. The bay horse did not turn From the hanged hay bag He was defrocking. His lean flanks built to his marbled neck, His name was Irish. The Connemara pony keened Across her sun-spotted turnout, For the all-powerful alfalfa as she knew to Anticipate. The call filled the barn Aisle also, like she'd cried for the killed mice. The farmhand bore Their paired corpses in his own Oiled dirt-flecked rag, His veteran hands, reverent, So nearly cradling them Through the inadequate fabric. Their furred rumps didn't shake In his steps, their threaded tails lay still. Each one had been snapped while alone But the couple were found together, joined Like martyrs by the two tiny guillotines. He bore them heavily to the manure pile, to Disturb, memorialize, its mass of clouding sweet scent With the unnoticed addition of the two mice. A sweltering sun had overthrown the afternoon, Coating the farmhand's neck and underarms in thin sweat lashes So that he laid down, with the care of the first, the dead To shed his borrowed olive coat before he dug, Just his caked boot kicking in the door of the inferno. Greater heat greeted him. It singed his charges' whiskers, Lighting now too late those small unused fuses, But the farmhand smells only the manure he has breached, He ties his rag shut around the corpses, Already aflame. In this genteel veil, they enter the farm's maw. Oh it was a feckin' shame, Irish would say Only when the boy returned To haul new grain before his stall. Erinn would crowd the farmhand As he maintained her with another meal. In the stalls mice aren't worth a sniff. Not a glance when killed For sneaking into the horses' feed. But Irish would've spoken truly, had he cared to speak. It is, to the very roots of the land, a shame that the traps have stolen The pride of purpose from the plumped cat in her hamper. From her the unfeeling bars have taken the dance-like deaths of mice, As the manure's new tinder had, but only once, Fatally stolen the farmhand's cheddar bait. Their bodies, their very paws and hairs a crime, dissolve in the heat. The farmhand has not reentered the barn, perhaps he won't.
"Rural Wake"