Road Tar
A kid said you could chew road tar if you got it before it cooled, black globule with a just-forming skin. He said it was better than cigarettes. He said he had a taste for it. On the same road, a squirrel was doing the Watusi to free itself from its crushed hindquarters. A man on a bicycle stomped on its head, then wiped his shoe on the grass. It was autumn, the adult word for fall. In school we saw a film called Reproduction. The little snake-father poked his head into the slippery future, and a girl with a burned tongue was conceived.
Credit
From The Snow Watcher, published by Ontario Review Press, 1998. Copyright © 1998 by Chase Twichell. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Date Published
01/01/1998