Shed
by Brandon Thurman

My husband praises my fingernails,
              how long they are, how pink, but when

                              I have to clip them, they skitter up into a pile
                              that makes him gag. At the vegan bakery

               today, hundreds of miles from home, I found 
an eyelash stuck to my tart cherry muffin.

                             For some reason, I didn’t ask to speak
                             to the manager. I just brushed it off

as I would’ve from my own son’s cheek. 
            Why are our bodies hardwired for disgust

                          of what they leave behind? The first time
                           I saw a dead body, it was just two feet

               sticking out from under the blanket
the policeman had draped there. I froze 

                            there for too long. I couldn’t stop counting
                            the shoes. I couldn’t make it all add up.

I thought of the old church ladies
              sprawled flat at the foot of the altar,

                             with their pantyhose & floral silk skirts,
                             how they’d kicked off their high heels

               to declare that ugly carpet holy ground.
My father went around spreading altar cloths 

                            over their legs. He told me they’d been slain 
                               in the spirit. Even a dog can play dead,

if not convincingly. They’re too full of life.
              They leave it in tufts all over the goddamned

                             floor. When I found mine in the backyard
                             dead, her body was already stiff, full of darkness,

               like our rusted metal shed, jowls 
curled back into an unbecoming 

                             snarl. It was like a sick doll 
                             someone had left there 

to taunt me. I told the vet to burn it down 
               into a small lump of ash. Back home,

                             I gathered all her shed fur & held it in a pile
                             in my lap. I know I don’t have to tell you how

                 it wasn’t the same, how my whole body rang
hollow as a bell with no tongue.
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Brandon Thurman is the author of the chapbook Strange Flesh (Quarterly West, 2018). A 2021 Gregory Djanikian Scholar, his poetry can be found in The Adroit Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Nashville Review, Sixth Finch, and others. He lives in the Arkansas Ozarks with his husband and son. You can find him online at brandonthurman.com or on Twitter @bthurman87. ​