dead dove : do not open

dead dove

do not fly over

my head

you are not above

being a dead dove

 
 
 
what did I expect?

the note around your leg said

this dove is dead, do not

do not, do not, do not interact

it dove, it took a dive for my hair, though

it didn’t deaden the impact

was it a bullet or a heart attack

dead dove, don’t be that way

flying and falling as soon as you hear a trigger

it’s just practice, it’s just fiction

 
 
 
have they eaten

the dead dove you left

in the icebox, an aviary memorial

which you were probably saving

to pass for chicken to passersby in the marketplace

forgive them, for they were probably starving

 
 
 
and I thought I was the unhappiest person I could fathom

and I thought, if I see one more bad rhymer rhyme it for love

I’ll put on the gloves and kill it myself

didn’t need to, as it was dead

everything is dead, dead-on, and then

a do-over on my down-out bad luck

because I do the things when they’ve said, Don’t

and then I look over, to the sidewalk near a café

walking to school thinking of pastries much too expensive

on the other side, no warning, no basic etiquette

another dead dove by the cemetery, and it occurred to me

I’d never seen a dead thing in real life, not as dead as that

they cover it up before it gets to the guts rotting in the open,

in front of children, in front of salad bars

 
 
 
do you remember I told you when I got back

and you said you’d seen a dead dove as well?

on the very same path

and we wondered how long it’d been dead

and why they wouldn’t clean it up

so we wouldn’t have to look at it

or if it could be that we’d seen two different doves

in a similar state of decay, dead in the very same place

and if anyone ever got killed in cemeteries

and if that was as logistically convenient as it sounded (probably not)

it’s like the boots, you said, of the abandoned pair on the sidewalk

they don’t ever pick up after themselves

but they do, because didn’t you tell me later

you’d seen that dead dove feasted on by a live one?

or did I make that up completely