Driving through
hot brushy country
in the late autumn,
I saw a hawk
crucified on a
barbed-wire fence.

I guess as a kind
of advertisement
to other hawks,
saying from the pages
of a leading women’s
magazine,

“She’s beautiful,
but burn all the maps
to your body.
I’m not here
of my own choosing.”

- THE DOUBLE-BED DREAM GALLOWS, Richard Brautigan