Tall brown grass scratches their legs while
they walk without talking through the fields.
There is a rock on the shoreline of the creek
that was split in half by them long ago with
a bigger rock they carried together over the
barbed wire fences.
Screwing rabbits pair off on the hilltop and
the cats watch from a distance waiting until
their guard is down and they stop listening
for what’s behind them in the weeds.
The horse debates quietly in her head about
whether she could make it if she kicked
the fence. The open plains in the west
she saw in her ancestral dreams may not
even exist any more as far as she knew.
They open the door of a small shack with
aluminum walls and there’s a lamb there
waiting for them that a friend owned but didn’t
want to slaughter. Not because they had a
problem with the lamb dying, but more
because they didn’t want to do it
themselves.
They put the bolt gun to its head between its
two tired eyes, but before firing heard
the fences get kicked down.
They ran out of the room much
faster than they entered and left the door
wide open behind them. The lamb took its
leave and walked out toward the hill where
twelve cats parted around him, going the
other way, each one with a kill in their jaws.
Teleporting Typewriter 