The Kinship of Deer

Blood drew its usual crowd. They
jammed the sidewalks for the chance
to know death without actually dying.

When medics peeled the sheet and most
of him off the street, a collective gasp.
All had envisioned symmetry,

in the tidy way we picture our own death—
hands folded, plump and smiling,

not the messiness of roadkill, the bent
injustice, as if possessing reason
should let us die clean.

Patrick Carrington

Patrick Carrington is the poetry editor of the on-line art & literary journal Mannequin Envy (www.mannequinenvy.com). He has work forthcoming in The New York Quarterly, Rattle, Rosebud Magazine, The Marlboro Review and other journals. His first book-length collection of poems, Rise, Fall and Acceptance, will be out in early 2007 from Main St. Rag Press.