Curt’s Leg By Trish Saunders

Finally, you come to the reason for your visit: 

Whatever happened to Cousin Curt? 

I'll tell you, but first a stiff bourbon, no ice, and no questions after. 

Curt gave up his diet of Fatso’s Fried Chicken; coke, booze and ecstasy;

 5-Hour Energy Shakes; and a crazy ex-wife who shot holes 

in his leather jacket. But losing his Harley after losing his license— 

that knocked the heart out of him, silenced his merry baritone belting out,

"Mississippi moon, won’t you keep on shining.” 

If our cousin phoned someone in his final hour, after a copperhead

snuck into his tent in the Arizona White Mountains, 

sank its fangs into Curt's left calf, 

I don’t know who he would have called. God, maybe.

Curt had found religion at last. I’m sure he sent out prayers that night, 

and who can say they went unanswered.

Trish Saunders writes poems and short fiction from Seattle and Honolulu. She has work in The American Journal of Poetry, The Rye Whiskey Review, Pacifica Poetry Review, and Silver Birch Press, and other places.