Friendlies

by Tina Barr

 

At the window, flies slide,
black droplets at the panes,
their dead bedded in my carpets.
When I push back the couch it drags a smell,
a raccoon collapsed like a sock, insides drained out.
The landlord slides his shovel under it.
A black stain, a musk, hair stuck to its
imprint, has planted itself in the floorboards;
a litter of white grains, tiny as rice, shivers.

Blind, a baby,
he came through the chimney,
shrank to a puppet while flies laid their eggs.
In the woods wild turkeys paraded their offspring
past green walls of trees. I tanned, walking to town.
You lay in my arms, hidden in my cabin,
your eyes bright and shifting.
Flies cluster, buzzing,
caught in the rooms of my heart.

 

© 2005 Tina Barr

Tina Barr directs the Creative Writing Program at Rhodes College. She received a Fellowship in Literature from the Tennessee Arts Commission in 2004. A book of poems, The Gathering Eye, winner of the Tupelo Press Editor's Prize, was reviewed recently in Hayden's Ferry Review and Water Stone Review.