Poetry

The two-headed pig was jammed into a jar
so I couldn’t tell it from the cat with two bodies

or the cloven-hoofed devil baby discovered
dead in a dumpster in New Jersey but Snake Girl

was alive— no arms, no legs, no bones in her body.

So we were watching

a documentary on cows standing

not in fields of green grass

like we saw Upstate, but

In a better world

casinos comp grafts for those about to be burned, 

poetry workshops include vocational training,   

He took my hand

that grey day

dark, muscled

trees emptied of birds.

It’s a miracle we survive at all,
I say, as we walk the cases,
wincing at a colon as big as a stove pipe,
scowling at ribs deformed

Had they had different names,
or had this not been her first job
Stateside, or had the guy
just ordered instead of insisting