You sit on the beach and pick at fish bone
after maggots and flies have had their way,
poke it with a stick, listen to the tide,
wonder what it sounds like underwater.
Whale songs, shark bites, seal birth, and coral
in a circus of clown fish, puffers, and lions.
I dig a hole to bury the carcass,
the bone, no flesh, you name him Sergio.
As the dolphin tide rolls in sand erodes
exposes the burial bone by bone
until it washes to sea like drift wood.

When we were young we captured frogs out back
in the creek in the woods behind your house,
and once I tripped into a small ravine.
We found door sized slabs of concrete or rock
engraved with names and nineteenth century dates.
Civil War gravestones, some professor said,
and they were moved somewhere to some museum.
Later on the news they interviewed us,
and in the background bulldozers dug holes
that exposed some two hundred year old bones,
skeletons and skulls, excavated from burial,
as we smiled to the channel two reporter.

I'm chasing a chupacabra through Mississippi
through mud thick like chocolate milkshakes
and rain soaked boots stick to my socks to my skin
I run around trees and zag and zig to navigate
a maze of horticulture past ferns and bushes
and it stops.

We're eye to eye
like two old lovers
spotting each other
from across a beach bar
except those bloodsucker eyes
could paint the Grand Canyon red
and nosferatu fangs
still warm from goat *******
could sizzle the sun.
Cobra tail whiplash
spotty patches of hair
the ugly duckling.

I aim my pistol at the beast and pull the trigger
like a civil war hero king of champion hill
and the bullet takes off at the speed of life
it penetrates the animal and blood sprays
out of the torso like a garden hose set on mist
and I run up to the almost dead chupacabra
and it barks
softer than balsa
whimpers of a new born
puppy tears
staining red eyes
and as loud as a mouse
it says goodbye
in dog