STRANGER

They would congregate right regular.


( In the dirt-lot of the First Baptist

or along by that abattoir off the brackcreek. )


The hot meat of the matter

being to parse-patch what they’d heard of what she was.


Marrowwise what she was to them was

foreign-faced Not natural : Not from here.


Of no ( known ) rhizomatic strain nor kith nor kin.


Word said and word’d spread She’s some flotsam

from that load of ‘those’ what flooded here by boat.


Say they bought some bait from off her cart—

how they’d pincer-snatch their change like she was hot.


—pink dew-worms I got! fish-eyes & roaches. live

minnows for cheap. chicken ( neck ) gristle. no crickets.


Her ( uncreased ) neck her every body-part their snack.


Theirs to eyeball-eat and memorize;

to judge; to pass from each to each from mouth to ear.


Have you smelled the hair on her. Have you

bagged a feel of leg. Would you—


You could always put a bag on her. Why she all the time

bansheeing ( bent down ) dawn-sweeping her dirt.


Possessed by slingstone fireball-bags of shit they torched her yard.


( Wouldn’t they congregate

right regular. )


By time and ire her rent-house formed a skin of dunt and char.