About the Column:

Poems of Our Climate is a weekly poetry column run by Sofia Baluyut ’23. The column was founded by Oliver Egger ’23 as a part of the literary magazine group Route 9.  Submit and read past issues of The Lavender at Route9.org. If you are interested in having your poem featured in this column, Poems of Our Climate, please email your work directly to sbaluyut@wesleyan.edu.

“Road Kill”

a house cat lies paralyzed,

rigor mortis preserving the instant

a soul departed, blood dripping

from the left nostril has dried solid,

connecting to the pool underneath

in a delicate red line

 

one eyeball rolls on a pink string

stretched through a scaly crack in

half of an Armadillo’s shattered face

opened like an eggshell, his leaky yolk

fries sunny side up on the pavement

 

an opossum offers its intestines

ripped open rib cage a cornucopia

the shining white bones picked clean as

dark wings beat overhead

 

pink flesh stretches like bubblegum

from the bloody beak of this huge black bird

whose feast we have disturbed, he leaves behind

a small wet hairy stinking dead thing

 

a carcass so twisted

it is unrecognizable,

or rather

easily recognizable

(it is a twisted carcass)

but unidentifiable,

brown fur dark blood broken bones

some reckless mammal

but who?

 

I grimace and turn

to Elijah, what the fuck was that?

we laugh, teeth clenched, and

the vultures resume

 

About the Poet: 

Oliver Bijur is a comedian, filmmaker, and writer from Charlotte, Vermont. He writes poetry in his journal and wrote the first draft of this piece while on a cross-country bike tour where he saw a lot of disgusting dead animals up close on the side of the road, but he writes about a lot of other less nasty stuff too!