“Could you imagine,” said Mary,
“being a bird, flying around the globe
grazing on berries and garbage.”
The dogs followed her off the front porch
and drooled on the concrete,
leaving silver lines of slobber –Pollock style–
all over the beige sidewalk canvas.
Rain-wet cement and daisies lined the street,
a house on blocks to avoid floods and dreams
and a salt hole visible from the doorway.
“The decay of modern engineering,” said Mary.
“no dog can stop the cold rock salt
from eating the pavement.”
“Walkways tend to be the ugliest off-white-grey,
a hard surface to fall and scrape a knee.
When people lose their teeth in car wrecks,
I bet there is no finding them,” said Mary,
“scattered in pieces, blended into the concrete,”
as she walked toward the street, nest-building,
scanning each curb for little sharp bones.
Andrew Wittstadt is a recent MFA graduate in poetry at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana where he served as poetry editor for The McNeese Review. His work has appeared in The New Limestone Review, Foothill, and The Cider Press Review.