This morning, I saw them. Two raccoons in the traps,
     rolled furred balls, sad girl eyes unmoving, black rings
blurry with trouble, stuck. Wyoming wind cutting my
     face like a good apple and fat chickens strutting around
the silver traps. They take the chickens, someone explained.
     Something about kidnapping, something about killing
elsewhere: rubbery neck in feral mouth, dragging two by
     two to a burrow, little hands scraping feathers until a rubied
terrain of meat. In town, people are staring at me again.
     White men holding bacon to their mouths and looking.
Watching me look at them looking at me, salty meat on
     each saddled plate. Thinking about my murderous raccoons,
violence unseen, clean. I’m not sure what’s better, what’s worse.

This evening, they were gone. The raccoons had been
     “dispatched.” Not sent elsewhere, not sorrow slung a few
solid miles away. Shot: two echoes in short grass. The traps
     warm with two thick pelts. Now emptied, flies coming in for
a sip soon, surely. I just hate it. How one dead thing means
     another lives. It is the country, my friend texts me, and she’s
right. What do I know about what to keep or cure or kill?
     I kept eating bread gone moldy. I cured an egg in so much salt
and begged it to salve me. I killed my marriage before it killed
     me. If only time could unlatch itself, could scurry toward
city, country, whatever soft living came before all this. I hope,
     at least, the raccoons will be eaten. Stewed down, a useful elegy.