Nutria & If You’re Gonna Go You Gotta Get Out
Nutria
I make western wear for nutria,
she said, and sipped her gin rickey.
It’s a lucrative career. You’d
be surprised. I have contracts
with three different national circuses.
My profession is nowhere
near that interesting, I replied,
seltzer water to my brow. I
make internal parts
for the meatgrinders
they use in small game
slaughterhouses.
I thought about the blade
that came in for repair
yesterday, the nicks
that looked like they’d come
from a miniature sheriff’s badge
If You’re Gonna Go, You Gotta Get Out
It’s never the expected. The city’s
maintenance crew filled every
pothole, patched every crack
in the same week. The resultant
sigil opened a portal to—well, where
is anyone’s guess. But after
the inevitable horde was defeated,
the seeds they’d tracked
onto our soil like a muddy dog
home with a just-caught pheasant
were the genesis of these sashimi
trees you see lining the boulevard.
Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Page and Spine, The Pointed Circle and Failed Haiku, among others.