Possum

1.

A child points        outside, beside a rusted cypress: this scuttling. They squat together, child and woman peering into the darkness, under a rind of light, seeing a screwed face and bad dentistry, a jagged pelt aglow, its dirty tallow burning just outside their window. It snarls at them, at these two shadows peering, one delighted by fear, and one amazed. Is this how the past approaches?

2.

I see them, growling and raising their long claws in the razored light, these dogs. But I don't do what they suppose, fall down, faint, overcome by possibility, by fear, by habit, or pretend that tooth, claw, and an imperfect sense of mystery are the only defenses. No, I turn my nose to them, show them my teeth, fierce snarling to let them know: I am a poet!

3.

Fifteen baby possums will fit in the bowl of a tablespoon.

4.

From the compost    rinds and rottings, from the garbage    peels, from the shadows' darkness, darkness,     this guttered meal and all its redolence. What we were, what we were shaped to be, fasts on waste. What we are points its vulpine head and sniffs but the next minute has no scent, and the minute before is already carrion: eat. In memory's midden this rubbish eater: sucker of yolk and entrails, the biter of mice coveting the blueing breads, bones, and maggotted meat. Our appetites are no bigger than we are. From the compost    rinds and rottings, from the garbage    peels, from the shadows' darkness, darkness,    this guttered meal and all its redolence. Why do you dine on refuse and avoid the banquet?

5.

Possums are immune to rattlesnake venom.

6.

And the possum has mastered these lessons: of persimmons - time and energy vibrating on a string of light equals sweetness; of night - in the absence of color all things reveal themselves by shape, smell, or trembling; of prehensile tails - look down! The world is uncertain. We shake like Quakers above a molten fire, small embers spinning on a ball of fire; swaying back and forth, on our prehensile tails, signal lights before an impossible engine; of playing possum - this is faith: arise and walk! of jacklighting - stunned we hold ourselves       still on a dark branch, death? Or a lover's touch just there - ah! Still.

7.

Infant possums inside their mother's pouch, inhaling the same air, suffocate.

8.

The hounds bay and Webster's voice bawls through the piney woods. Trembling, the kudzu turns green ears to the distance: listen. The mind runs, climbs, scuttles, leaps, scramble-stumbles and burrows into briared dream. Hiding for one brief moment before the rending, the night's belly torn open, its blasted heart pounding ca choom, ca choom, ca choom, blood spilling its red sand, its red sand, its red sand, spilling for one brief moment. Fireflies blink under a stand of pine, an owl calls hu hu, hu-huuuuu, hu hu, hu-huuuuu. On its dark branch, the jacklighted moon glints at a stunned world, and a possum scurries away.

9.

In Vernon, a colored child is given a possum patty for breakfast, a patty sweet with salt and red-peppered. She holds greasy fingers up to her grandmother. Meat, Big Mama, meat! and is given another. In Vernon, a colored child is given a possum patty from a heat-smoky skillet, and it is salt-sweet, greasy, and generously peppered, large enough to fill both her hands.