but needed to see anyway, they'd put on their work
gloves and grab a bat sleeping upside down in the attic
and hold it still so we'd have to look at its small eyes
and fangs, its triangle ears like a little dog's,
and the black fuzz on its head sticking straight up
like the minister's baby who died from crib death, they'd
gut a fish and cut open the egg sac or take out their own
glass eyes and roll them across the table, they'd slip out
their false teeth and smile at us or lead us down
to the tracks to see the woman in the car that had been
crushed by a train, or anything born with two heads
or an eye in the center of its forehead, or the burned
velvet curtains flapping in the wind around the black
stage when the opera house burned down.