-The death trinket-

I’ve noticed that the cat

when approaching something new

laid upon the rug will step forward with

a hesitant posture.

It seems as though this is true for just about all cats.

European kids will instinctively kick

any idle ball within a foot’s reach.

In my Country, the default mechanism is to throw it.

As for the domestic parakeet when

considering its cage, well, it seems

as though the inside is as good as the outside.
Perhaps the bird disagrees.

––There comes a man to a nation, spewing

a mouth’s-full of sneers through any open portal.

This man is inflated across the waistline like a 19th

century Daumier cartoon buffoon. –– This man is vulgar.

A scalp-full of fool’s gold is spray-fixed in place

by handmaidens specializing in filament dynamics, and

––if Rube Goldberg himself set down a design for a man,

this is the man he’d build,––comically ridiculous, unnecessary, absurdly

exaggerated without the inherent charm of Rube's usually absurd exaggerations,

exhibiting the pomposity of Mussolini, and he'd be coldblooded, and

intellectually hamstrung singing "God Bless America" from amplified

megaphones stationed all over town on a never-ending loop.

                -Virginia Fox, vaccinated-

                 drying-up

                 at the half-length mirror

                 it’s hard not to notice the convex
                 arch of the belly, the drapery

                 of skin at the fore-neck, the blue-

                headed retraction

                into the tangled thicket and the remnant

                of a grade school’s polio vaccination

                which by this time has all but vanished.

                a more direct examination reveals

                a clearer image of what was once

                a robust site, the nucleus

                surrounded by the tension

                of healing hairline fissures.

                now it’s seen as a dot, unremarkable,

                although the glazing is brighter there

                than the pallid skin surrounding it,–– like

                a primordial pool.

                from the corridor, the jolting

                bell calls us to our desks, but first

                a close examination is made of the injection site

                below the left shoulder of Virginia Fox, interrupting
                the slow-arching smoothness of her skin there.

                It will soon become a confection of sorts,

               more of a blooming,–– a dandelion’s petals

               circling the gleaming at the hub and little sense of a wound

               and because of this, it’s Virginia Fox who comes to mind this morning.  

-the American bison called buffalo-

the first time I saw the Great Plains Buffalo,

was at the “Buttonwood Park Zoo”––

a small zoo in New Bedford, about 15 miles

from my house in Fall River.

Buttonwood Park was on the short-list of possible

Sunday afternoon attractions along with "Lincoln
Amusement Park", route 6 east,

Horseneck Beach, 88 south, Westport,

the “Shrine of Our Lady of LaSalette” up Attelboro
(where the ancient French women prayed the rosary for an encore)
and best of all, secretly planned extended family “Mystery Rides”,
the logistics of which were worked-out by Uncle Frank and my young father.

"Who knows where the “Mystery Ride” will take us"?!

after church, the cars lined-up at curbside at 1017 Bedford,
with Uncle Frank’s car in the lead position, followed by
my father’s car, followed by Cousin Albert’s car with young
wife Celia riding shotgun, followed by Romeo LeVesque’s car
holding his wife, cousin Edith, followed by the gang of Pieroni’s
in three cars, followed by the Gasperini clan, the crazy Petrucci’s,
the Burtoncini’s and lastly, the Cippolini family, usually crammed into two cars.

this Sunday, the Mystery Ride ends at "Buttonwood Park Zoo".

that’s where I'd see the Great Plains Buffalo for the first time.
out back, a large fenced-in pastoral area is set aside for the buffalo to roam,

but a smaller pen was set for visitors wanting to view them.
from the busy walkway there’s a shoulder-high chainlink fence

and just beyond that, a higher chainlink fence enclosing the buffalo pen.

but inside this fence, five inch diameter iron piping,
chest-high to the buffalo, ran continuously along the interior perimeter.
the buffalo seemed docile, but once in awhile, one of them

would bang his monstrous head on purpose, into the pipe with a resounding clang.

and they’d grunt on occasion, but beyond that and the head-to-pipe banging,

they’d just stand there as if waiting for something expected.

their liquid eyes are round and luminous black.

their hair, golden-brown at the withers is matted and riven.

their noses are wide with wet, black nostrils where the grunting

seemed to have come from, but it comes from deep within instead.

the whole place stinks.

the dung covers the ground in there, it sticks to their hooves,

is plastered across their asses.

I count three Great Plains Buffalo in the pen as I see them for the first time.

I think they’ve come to understand where they are.

I fear they’ve forgotten where it was they’ve come from, hauled from afar 
to Buttonwood on a Mystery Ride of their own so that one day I could take a look.