Saddled (notes)

He saddles up and rides at dawn a long trail between nettlebanks, idly considering the forager’s life. This early light pinning the cooled body of a roadkill rabbit or young hare, lurcher coursed, blood matted fur with darker flecks. The darker wild onion stalks now several feet high in places alongside the road and in the grit and glass spray of the verge abandoned gloves, pacifiers, condoms, detritus to be picked over or poached. Unwant, disuse. Fewer cars at this hour and sky flat dark in the east like the belly of a priapic mule. Spitting rain in lighter gusts and the neon whipping on his cuffs and back as if the flayed skin of a larger man had been hung around him as an afterthought.

Last evening the squawk of a roadbound tortoise – at a new extremity. Walked to tremulous safety by a passing and flat-footed motorist, the shield-beast at arms’ length he waddle-walked to the shoulder. Bushes herald the animal’s hurried retreat. Think of its meat, cooked in its shell on ribald coals, a smoked tinge (think of jerky strips) – every thing he sees with its underbelly, everything exposed, torrid, licentious.