It began with bats as
sometimes, it does.
Bat claws scratching. Bat voices
chirping. Bat families
squeezed between the stairs
and the attic door.
————
Evening, only street, Crow River.
Pickup truck after
pickup truck; dirt roads, tall browning grass,
weeds in the irrigation ditch.
One dusktime walk a pheasant
burst up, scared the shit
out of the dog.
————
Bat thwap landing
on my mother’s bare thigh.
Midnight. Hot sticky summer.
Bat. Thwap. Thwap.
Fuck.
————
Swimming in a t-shirt in the
river overflowing, afternoon downpour
everything green
everything grey.
Huddled on the screened in front-porch;
my grandfather’s glass of
powder-made lemonade. The game,
dummy-rummy, Swedish and
Norwegian flags flapping
in rain kick-back wind.
————
Bat hunters—
mother, grandmother, grandfather.
Bat hunting—
tennis racket, frying pan, broom.
Elusive bats. Multitude of bats.
Bats on bats on bats.
————
Matching kitchen and bathroom
linoleum, black and white
like Italy, red walls.
Well-traveled whole-life couple
whose friends don’t like when
he cooks
she talks at the dinner table,
their daughter
whose daughter
doesn’t wear skirts.
————
My grandfather’s burn pile,
writhing brown paper bags
he carried out
one at a time, three a day,
bats.
————
Because corn stalks cut skin
when you run too fast between them:
a Minnesota summer
but the stray cat they call Capote
the house cat, Truman.
Neighbor in a one-piece
on an ATV with a shotgun
three kids
one target:
neighborhood woodchuck.
Same neighbor, other summer:
her kids’ black and white rabbit released.
All the rabbits are cow-rabbits
in Crow River now.
————
Burning bat bodies
isn’t illegal but
bat murder is.
————
Hang buckets of water under the eaves
so bats fall in and drown—
bat assisted-suicide.
Bat vulnerability.
It ended with bats,
with bat endings.
Bats on bats on bats.
Modern Poets Magazine 