Bone Hunting

Bone Hunting

Hung over as shit I sit

shotgun, holding it together,

not wanting to

vomit all over this beautiful

sunny day, hunting, hunting

for for the skulls of roadkill,

maybe if we turn here – yeah,

here just over that next patch

of gravel and dirt past the next

gas station and ribs joint but

just not far enough out of town
-- we stop at starbucks --
and almost stop at an antique

store, but it’s closed on Sundays

and we’re driving just driving
out of Austin, towards Spicewood
Texas, and after that Shovel Mountain,

Horseshoe bay, a skull is a nice souvenir,

better than other bones, to take
to the uncle, the rare book collector.

But what if we find the head, with
guts and brains and the other
stuff too, and our adventure
turns wrong, now we’re excavating
a cadaver, one that a tiny family of
opossums didn’t even want, but
we’ve scavenged it, guts and all,

so we put it in the used coffee

container, so now it smells like

roadkill and steamed soy milk,

and i gag because this is just too

much for a body going through

severe sugar withdrawl, but Becca

insists it's a gift and i agree because

no one wants to be the grinch and

i before i can say ok it's in the cupholder

on the passenger side jesus dude

can't we put it in the trunk so we stop

and open the trunk, but that feels too

much like a rerun of the Sopranos

so back to the cupholder it goes

and what we'd do when we get home

i don't know but that's not my problem

i just concentrate on not getting sick

all over this beautiful sunny day.