I smell it first—a faint
whiff
of fish and sewage, then the bear
as I come upon it, eyes sprung open,
smirched blacked lips.
Dead
on a country road.
I’ve asked myself
Why?
Why on days of less Mother, whose dials tune
to places I can no longer visit.
Less
Father, who I don’t mourn, and mourn for that.
When I comfort myself,
hands crossed over heart, in an atheist’s
prayer,
I draw a map back to the bear.
And if that night is filled
with too much real, I hear the hoot
of the auto
that flattened the animal bear-
ing down,
taste a memory of trout, its sweet flesh
on the animal’s
tongue.
Tina Barry is the author of Beautiful Raft (Big Table Publishing, 2019) and Mall Flower (Big Table Publishing, 2016). Her writing can be found in the Indianapolis Review, Rattle, Verse Daily, The Best Small Fictions 2020 (spotlighted story) and 2016, trampset, Yes, Poetry, Gone Lawn, The American Poetry Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Gyroscope Review, the Fourth River, the Maryland Literary Review, Nasty Women Poets anthology and elsewhere. Tina is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has several Best of the Net nods. She is a teaching artist at the Poetry Barn and Writers.com. Find her at TinaBarryWriter.com.