FAWN WARD
Places We've Been
How to kill a rattlesnake:
hold your shovel with both hands. Do not
close your eyes. See the body spiraled
into one clenching muscle; writhing
with the vibration of survival.
Don't let the head rise too high
or it will sing its venomsong to you
before you strike.
Cleave through flesh, leave the skin
for knives and sharper tools. Gather the pieces,
twitching and thudding the empty heartbeat percussion
of staccato tones to slow, weakening
for silence as they dry. Then you can shake its tail like a toy.
My mother had a box of them
I played with as a child. A collection of souvenirs
she kept from the places we’d been,
the warning tones of poison now powerless and dull.