JUKE
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JOINT
Coyote
You feel the grass with your slippers, never with snout or feet.
Fetching again the news with your godly paw.
Fangless and sleepless, annoyed you can’t order the weather.
Snout a cute little morsel that never snaps bait.
Go brew your coffee—I’m ready awake.
Knee-high if you care to spot me, a yawn
in your parched hedge. I sniff weeds, smell possum and egg.
Your someday sky will fall. In the meantime
we could burrow together, pounce, break a few necks.
Truth strikes from above and in the dark.
Why not stomach this fact and join me for a disembowelment?
I dare you, sir, dare you. I double-dog dare you.
Coyote
​
Death is deaf,
but I’m his hearing.
He watches while
I put to rest
hearts in the wildest
mice. I can also
clean a possum’s
clock, though
Death likes it best
when I listen
for a litter’s heat.
Without fur,
pink, in ticking,
their bones are
their tastiest part—
we heart them so.
Coyote
​
Yo! What’s with your creep
need to get us all killed?
Even half-asleep I’m kind of thrilled
your so-called soul is a troll,
a whole lot of crock,
and every night I can hear
that Doomsday clock.
Listen to it, clickety tickety
tock. Dumbass Jack,
if you can’t hear that
you’ll only know me
in the abstract, so I rip another
track, your trick, no pet.
I’m a bad motherfucker
with a rabid alphabet.
I’m your alpha, son, you can bet.
I crouch real close
and wait for the worst
since you’ll never quench
your drop-dead gorgeous thirst.
When the rockets launch,
I’ll burn to my den.
Hey, it’s hella cool if I’m a bit
too thin. I’ll lurk all winter.
I’ll juke, I’ll win. And it ain’t no joke
you’ll grease my chinny chin.
David Roderick is the author of two books of poems, Blue Colonial and The Americans. From 2017 to 2019 he wrote a weekly poetry column for The San Francisco Chronicle. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow and Amy Lowell Scholar, Roderick lives in Berkeley, California and co-directs Left Margin LIT, a creative writing center and work space serving writers in the Bay Area.
Photo by Rachel Richardson