Roadkill Finds between Shifts at the Pub

I scrape the hide of a pregnant doe picked upSunday on Franklin Mountain Road. Skin pulled tight

against the trellis of ribs and shoulder knobs,pearled spine bent to the push. Out here

in the cut no one wears a shirt on sunny days,so yes, my nipples swing as I slough off the fat

and hair and let it land at my feet—look at the unborn’s hide, snowy spots on the flank,

skin so thin your nail could go right through.Plumes of flies pulse on the piles. Deer and bear

float in buckets of bark tan, hemlock and oaka menstrual red of rolling folds that has me thinking

of being small in black water, snakes scaling through swamp,and of Rick the Roofer, my 3:00–5:00 regular.

He waits on weekends with crossbow arched—listening for the hoofed and clawed and his own making.

Monday a long way off out there in the hemming lightwith the redtails hawking for phoebes. Skin me, he said,

I want my tattoos splayed out behind the whiskey bottles.There will be scars in the small hide from the stabbing,

and I’m not sure if I can move the liquor license,the irish need not apply sign, but I’ll hang you

somewhere among the dollars and football flags,where the neon looks like new growth deep in the holler.