go get pop.

we’d be up catching flies in the kitchen.
late nights when my brother wasn’t michelobing.
i can feel it in the air tonight, o lord.
he was older, so he had the technique down.
he’d sneak up on one, take it, shake it like craps dice,
then slam it off the ripped linoleum.
laughing like harlem folks in the apollo,
we’d wait for another one to come down from the drop ceiling,
panels stained, looking like rorschach tests,
as if some bum lived above,
passing out, spilling his wild i.
anyway…
we’d wait for one to come down,
catch it, wing it,
all night long. all night, all night, all night long.
we goin’ to mambo, carumba, keep the
back door open like u.s. borders that create tejanos,
flies check in, but they don’t…

we had those oscar the grouch trashcans
on the back porch. They were clanging about.
step onto the miniature-golf turf that cloaked the porch floor.
dude, what was that?
lids were off. a ‘possum eating stereotypical trashcan trash—
coffee grinds, eggshells, plantain peels, the like.
turns out the fucker had a skull like jaws from moonraker.
convulsing in the corner, hissing.
i pinned his neck down with the spade my brother produced
inspector gadget style
whilst he pumped pellets into marsupial melon.
15 or so spit from a co2 gun he got for christmas;
mr. opossum was o'possible to off.

all alliteration aside,
we were getting a little nervous with rasputin here.
my brother took over the spade-pinning detail,
go get pop!
i ran up the steps and woke him like revere.
excited ‘possum talk filled his thick ears,
he didn’t say a word, put his soles to that awful red carpet,
walked down deliberately in sagging fruit of the looms,
grabbed the spade from my brother,
beat that ‘possum to stillness with a shovel in his undies,
half asleep, his back hairs like armor.