Constellation

poetry 0
Jayne Benjulian

 

We are anchored in the stars
Larry Dossey, MD

 

Before I could grab nitrile gloves
& drop the body in the garbage can
a black triangle dive-bombed

 

the driveway—
two wingmen & one flying point—
pinched the headless mouse

 

another victim murdered
next to the house. Last night
a back-door corpse, this evening

 

one flat on the blacktop.
From woods to grass to iris stalks
like heat-seeking missiles, mice

 

clog the air compressor, chew
garage door wire, collapse
gasping in glue traps or,

 

beheaded, are lifted into air.

Jayne Benjulian is the author of Five Sextillion Atoms (Saddle Road Press, 2016) and poems and essays appearing in numerous literary and performance journals. She lives in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts.