There are slugs in the garden,
sliding gray sausage links
making funny faces.
You salt them and they shrivel
inside themselves, or you
take a stone and smash
it down. You just know
when something doesn’t belong,
you feel it, and
on other days you feel
differently. Those days you
carry them across the yard
and set them down careful,
sweet, on a branch or leaf.
You cry that you were there
to catch them in the act,
to see something and
have to stop it.
If only a mouth would widen
through the slime, scold
and shame, find a way
to share its story of coming
to the garden to make
you uncomfortable.
Some days it’s easier to kill
than to imagine such things.
Lauren Bender lives in Burlington, VT. Her work has appeared in IDK Magazine, The Collapsar, Gyroscope Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Yes Poetry, and others. You can find her on twitter @benderpoet.