Like a Bag of Cheetos Popping
- Like a Bag of Cheetos Popping
I’d never killed a thing I didn’t really want to die.
I looked down the van’s hood to where the grille licked the asphalt. A turtle cocked its head and took its last slow step.
Though I’d once drowned a squirrel in a slop trough for eating all the horse feed at my uncle’s ranch. My brother said stop when I held it to the bottom with a shovel,
but I meant it, I told him it was necessary, until it came out one long hiss. Eighteen ears pricked and bristled in the backseat.
A small gift that van drove fast. [End Page 19]
Tanner Pruitt received his BA from the University of Virginia and is an MFA candidate in poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The recipient of a fellowship from the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University, his poems also appear in San Pedro River Review, Midway Journal, Greensboro Review, and others.
