Some of you will die in the road. Some-not-all. Our folks’ve been around since before roads
the pavement crunch
burnt rubber
big wet eyeshine in the dark
leg lock
stutterbreath
freeze
and freeze
and freeze
And get up, if you’re lucky.
Some of you will die in the road. I know that like I know the wind through the night trees clacking branches together like bones. I know it ‘cause it’s just a numbers game. But some of you won’t. Some of you will get smart. Get fed. Get big the way the roads got big, city-sound sprawl. Get mean. Get fat. Get into trash cans. Get good at knowing when to drop and roll.
There’s a lot of you now. There won’t be next spring. A year’s a funny thing. The beavers off the creek trail say the cicadas come singing every seventeen. But that’s the beavers for you. They get old. Our folks don’t get seventeen. We get cicada crunch between our teeth. We get all the screaming days of summer. The world’s louder these days. Smaller. Tighter. Dusk light hurts. Edges clatter. Hard to hide. Sometimes you go reaching for the dirt and hit concrete
dead
cold
nowhere to burrow nowhere to cling
all the roads roaring up to the sky
but we move different, our folks. We move in the dark. We have prowl time
moon high lone time
mouth slivered open showing teeth
even in the city it gets quiet at night if you know where to hide from the streetlights, and God, ain’t it pretty when you sneak sight of a star. We keep moving, our folks. Slow swaying steady. We don’t walk a straight line but we get where we need.
Listen close, yeah? I won’t have you long. I like quiet, lonesome. So will you, when you grow up. First I saw you, you were all writhing pink. None of you bigger than the caterpillars I licked off the honeysuckle last spring. I held you in the burrow of my body where the fur and skin and warm make a home and now I hold you on my shoulders along my back down to the tail. Hold close. Grip tight. Go solo soon. Get big enough to walk. Get it, then, why we like nights alone. The hawks whose babies beg-cry in the spring say they can see the whole big city from up there, all sprawling out and eating land like kudzu does. Down here we get the leaf litter and dirt. What I know’s underbrush, the cracks of things, the rich dirt smell, the edges and the seams. What I know’s down low, belly brushing pavement. You splay your paw and you can count to five. You count your springtimes and you won’t get to five. Our folks live short and we live hard and the end comes fast and bright. When the raccoons clattering in the cans ask why we spend so much time faking dead, you tell them it’s called a goddamn rehearsal.
Some of you will make it. I know that. You’re not my first litter and you won’t be my last. It’s a numbers game, but if you sniff around enough dumpsters you’re bound to hit the cat-food jackpot. I’m no catechist, but here’s my best: Stay low. Hold close. Flash teeth when you get cornered. When something bigger than your bite comes running, you don’t flee. You freeze, drop, sleep like the dead. If you’re lucky you’re not. Dogs don’t like deadsleep meals. Cars don’t care. If you open your eyes, you say, well, there’s dying down once. Get up. Get ready to do it again.
Hold close. Dig nails. Cling on tight. My momma said people don’t think about us. People move in straight lines
bright lights
hard stone turns
not like how we ramble and sway. My momma said people don’t think about us and she chewed up dead rats off a garage floor and died twitching with her belly full. It’s only half true, they don’t think about us. I’ve dropped down dead in front of half a dozen dogs. Woke up with their spittle ringing collars round my neck where their teeth couldn’t get through. Once they bayed me up a scabby old-field pine and I curled my tail ‘round the closest branch, looked down, and you know, I’ll be damned if people’s hands don’t look like ours. No fur, five fingers, five nails. Splay toes. Climb trees. Grip tight. When you get something you hold it hard. When it noses back to life you let it go. I let all my litters go and I don’t miss you, ‘cause I trust you know to prowl as good as me
mouth open
teeth shine
ducking from the light.
Most of our folks see just two springtimes. I want three. I want to hear the hawk chicks sing again. When I get scared I freeze, drop, sleep it off. I find small places. I find quiet. I find stars. In the dusk time, prick your nose for coyotes, for hounds off the leash. Don’t talk to nobody slobbering foam. Sometimes the death comes on you from the inside, curls you up and hurts like hell and no one smells it coming. For me, I know what’s coming, more than like. I know the cling of pavement under claws, the gravel ditches
apple cores
sweet rotten in the road glare
they throw feasts through rolled-down windows never knowing. I’ll show you how to shuck life from the crinkling foil, grease-wet bag
how to peel away the layers down to crusts and bun and burger rinds
and when that great roar bears down
whole ground shakes
that howl that rush that big wet headlight eye
You freeze. Drop. Sleep.
Some of you will get up.
[Download this piece as a printable zine here! Print double-sided; flip on the short edge :)]
max franciscovich 