Skunks
All this burning and yet still sodden world:
dead skunks along the road I drive homeward,
each day, raising smells like the underside
of lavender, dust and slate, my dry mouth.
They are, each day, ever more abstracted,
white and black coarse fur, driven by car wheel
ever more towards lumps of tufted pink gore,
then to brown, strangely flat things, dirt, dust.
Vincent Toups