Dissection
I’m telling myself he isn’t jerking off
over the frog, that he’s thirteen,
that his body said ‘now’ and he obeyed.
Belly glistening in formaldehyde
I expose the gray insides, the shriveled
heart no longer wet with river water.
A quiet glide of scissors. Oh—
the sounds of being split into parts.
Tangled intestines preservative gorged.
He is an animal drowning
in all that enters and leaves a body,
the need to extract himself from himself.
I throw the empty frog in the trash
next to his cum. Everything all at once.
Ashes to Ashes
I dream I peel his body from the road
and he actually comes up in one piece. There are no flies
or sounds of buzzing. No blood on his blue collar,
polyester and iron blend. Fur that doesn’t smell like it’s rotting,
no rotting or man who comes to scrape him off pavement
with a shovel. Please, be more gentle. He was my first:
my finicky old man, my dumb who rescued who bumper sticker,
my bed sharer and bad breathed child. You’re putting him
with mangle. roadkill. ticks and deer and flat.
I only wanted to check if the candle was still burning.
I want to call Animal Control on the man who pat my back,
said he saw him there yesterday turning to goo and walked away.
I have no paw print for the mantle or body for the backyard
so I stand outside the crematorium, let ash
fall into my hair like snowflakes, try and take a piece
of him, all the forgotten bodies,
home.
–Art by Marcos Lomba