Rachel Lindo, Contributor

I make my way down France Ave,

pokeweed beetles cluster the crumbling

black bike path, late guests to a beaver’s wake

going on ten feet further down.

The beaver lay spread eagle,

his gnawed on lips boiled in the sun

from a damned kiss on a car’s fender.

He had an estranged amphibian lover,

she couldn’t make it to his funeral either.

She forgot her loose leaf speech at home

and when she rushed her leaps,

a tire smashed her needle bones.

At the crosswalk the frog’s girlfriend,

a sparrow adorned in Fashion Week’s feathers,

nestled dead with melted candles left behind

with cross dressed in the finest duct tape

where a woman’s body crunched through a windshield

embracing the stoplight.

This article first appeared in the Friday, October 12 edition of The Echo.