Pellet

Ondrej Zicha, "Trox beetle stridulation," 2017

The banquet found by a knobbly trox beetle
after an owl’s done: that owl’s undigestable
disjecta compacted, coughed up. An owl is
built to wring its mouse dinner dry, to pack
bones and teeth tight, tuck their calcium in
gray felt, to hack them out. Not me. There
are places within me where words make a
chitinous knot, a lump in my throat. I’m all
choked up, can’t spit it out. It will pass, yes
I know; so do the trox beetles. They mass in
the mud at my feet, expectant, pheromone-
flagging their kin to come near, to wait as I
get myself free of the bones I can’t stomach.