There once was a trap that didn’t like what she did. All day and night
she’d lay in the woods with bait on her trigger, which would itch terribly,
until some poor creature would come by, attracted by the smell. Then she would snap
and someone would die, slowly and painfully. During the off-season she would hang
in the shed with the other traps and dream of flying, taking giant bites out of the
clouds.
For the most part she was lonely. The iron spike that secured her chain never said
much from having its head bashed in by a hammer all the time, and the animals she
caught only talked about the one thing she didn’t know how to do. But occasionally
a crow would stop by to peck at the dead animal in her jaws, or to wait and see who the
next unfortunate might be.
One day she said to the crow, “I’m stuck,” and the crow said,
“That’s because you’re a trap.”
“But I don’t like it,” said the trap. “I want to fly away and
not have to kill anyone anymore.”
“What an odd trap you are!” said the crow. “All the other traps say
‘I’m a flower!’ or ‘free lunch!’ or ‘short cut!’
but not you.”
“Well, I’ve had some time to think about it,” said the trap.
“So have all the other traps,” said the crow.
is the author of Shy Green Fields (No Tell Books) and The Opposite of Work
(JackLeg Press), as well as two Dusie chapbooks, Sorcery and Good Morning!
His poems have appeared in such places as Crowd, VeRT, Volt, Spork, Cue, Slope, Aught,
Fence, Swerve, dirt, ditch, Zeek, and Sweet, as well as a few places with more than one
syllable.
He teaches writing at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where he
edits the journal Eleven Eleven.