spew

Little Armored Thing

Little armored thing treks the desert

blindly. Grey and brown, dressed

in helmet, shield slung across

his back. He stops to feast

on a squirrel, plastered

to the gravel--a stripe of tire

tracks down its middle. I might call him

a sympathetic vulture, paying his respects

with peg teeth and sharp claws.

He hunches over the pavement, moonlight

on his shell of scutes and skin, adorned

with second skeleton, decorated

with bands like tight bangles. His

sweet pointed ears and snout extending

past his beady eyes.

Unwisely relaxed, uncurled

from the other shape he takes.

A ton of cold metal barrels down his

stretch of road, disrupting

his time of night.

Once a Mayan god of hunt watched

over him. Skill was needed, honor

deemed necessarily involved.

Once he was a huge glyptodont,

the weight of two cars, and hunted

for meat and the shelter of his carapace--

stalked, eaten, and lived in.

Once he was created to deceive

and knock unruly gods

onto their asses--a lesson in humility,

which he knows much about.

Now the crumbling sound of tires

on sand-caked gravel catches in his pointed ear.

He leaps four feet, majestically, a reverse

high-diver emerging from the water,

a trapeze artist illuminated by the spotlights

from the car, and, among landing,

is promptly cracked and squished

by the truck speeding away.

The helmet lies decapitated

from our desert soldier’s armor.

“Hillbilly speed bump,” the driver