by Daniel Lehan
Armadillos
In south Louisiana, we slowed to watch a family
of armadillos ambling along a roadside ditch.
I’d just finished telling Jill I’d never seen
a living armadillo, just carcass upon carcass
after having been hit by a car and flipped,
prehistoric-plated armor down, legs up,
pointy little snouts poking out.
Now here they were, a whole roll
of armadillos, full-grown and small.
A miracle! I said. We laughed and sped past. We were headed home to Albuquerque
after a visit to my family and a weekend
in New Orleans, where I’d wanted to drop
to a knee and ask Jill to marry me,
though marriage wasn’t legal for us then
and she’d soon leave me for a man
she thought was gay. That was the last time
I saw my sweet grandfather before he died
and the first I saw armadillos alive in the wild,
though I’ve come across others since then.
Marisa P. Clark is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection Bird (Unicorn Press, 2024). Her prose and poetry appear in Shenandoah, Cream City Review, Nimrod, Epiphany, Foglifter, Prairie Fire, Rust + Moth, Sundog Lit, Texas Review,and elsewhere. Best American Essays 2011 recognized her creative nonfiction among its Notable Essays. A queer writer, she grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, came out in Atlanta, Georgia, and lives in New Mexico with three parrots, two dogs, and whatever wildlife and strays chance to visit.
Daniel Lehan studied Fine Art at Winchester School of Art, England, and later studied Art Therapy at Goldsmiths College, London. His work has been published in various print and online poetry journals including 3:AM, Whiptail, Arteidolia, star82 review, The New Post-literate: A Gallery Of Asemic Writing, Otoliths, Ink Sweat and Tears, Ballast, M58, Neon, Word For/Word, foam:e, Indefinite Space, experiential-experimental-literature, Kumquat Poetry, the delinquent, and small po[r]tions. His erasure books and texts were recently exhibited at the University of West England. www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/erasures/.