Two Possums
curled together, mouths open,
lips drawn back, they lay in the wire cage
awaiting release into the Everglades,
that river of grass from which they came.
Teeth bared small sharp incisors
for roadkill or frogs in Florida’s haze.
Pruning the garden, I found their burrow,
watched one follow the other into the cage,
curl up as though dead, watched soft fur shudder,
breathed foul-smelling fluid, thought they’re “playing possum,”
until blood ran out the side of one’s mouth,
and the other lay still. And then, I rememberd
the rat poison. And how we kill those
who burrow and eat our waste while the
river of grass dries up, and dies.
Implosion
Make way,
gargoyled, swaying mass,
nothing is forever.
Suppose,
whispered the ruin,
forever is nothing.
Bio: A workshop leader for the Florida Center for the Book, Lucille Gang Shulklapper writes fiction and poetry. Her work has been anthologized and appears in many publications as well as her four poetry chapbooks, What You Cannot Have, The Substance of Sunlight, Godd, It’s Not Hollywood, and In the Tunnel Living up to traditional expectations led to work as a salesperson, model, realtor, teacher, and curriculum coordinator throughout schooling, marriage, children, and grandchildren.
Thoughts on poetry: To paraphrase Robert Frost, it means life and death and who I am as a person.