No. 9

Summer 2005

Unwanted in the farmland, a pack of survivors
try suburbia: smart and cunning
skulking through the backyards,
doggy prints in the late winter snow.

Soon they are worrying about mortgage rates
and how to calculate what they’ll need
for retirement if no one shoots them first.
In the dumpster behind Gold Pagoda restaurant
a fortune cookie says: Cooperation can bring down
a small doe.
So they split into fives
and corner her at the end of a ravine.
Her eyes are swollen acorns, theirs squinty sulphur.
Numbers and teeth prevail.

She would have eaten tulips come spring
to raise the blood pressure of the McKinneys.
They’re the ones standing at the window
counting trespassers creeping through the moon’s
cadaverous glow, unsure how big a wolf is,
whether if they open the door, all ten
will slither between their legs
to domesticate the family room.

Copyright 2005, Joanne Lowery

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.