I run along the country road 
and approach the carnage 
of gray fur and pavement 
feathered with blood, 
thinking, what if it’s a cat? 
Its fur was the color of March 
with its stormy clouds and gentle collapse. 
When I see it, its jaw is split, the blood 
pooling on the ground, its white tail 
the color of milk, my own breasts 
sweating against the sun, 
as if sweat can answer that light, 
salty sea turning the world blue 
like this sky when the clouds finally move. 

I return to my home, 
strip off my sweaty clothes and shower, 
watch my newsfeed and people 
in El Salvador, immigrants, 
crouched in files with their shaved heads. 
I listen to an interview where a woman 
says that thought is organic, 
then says it’s from the head down 
and I don’t know what to believe 
when I see the rabbit and its mouth open, 
the head split and gray like the sky today. 
The bodies of the prisoners 
bow like my neck leaning 
toward a broken animal 
we call to in our country 
to escape the machine 
careening on a dark road. 

I run home. 
The lilacs smell like children. 
My son tells me he is thriving.
 I’m dreaming of a life 
where the rabbit hops away. 

I stopped for that rabbit, 
so I did not escape his demise. 
The prison of its skull spoke to me, 
its cracked shell like a mother. 
I told my son nothing is certain. 
Watch for cars, watch for coyotes, 
scan the movements behind your back. 
Watch for the rabbits. 
They are about laboring mothers 
and babies and the stranger we let into 
our house, how the meal they cooked for us 
was seasoned, so tender, so perfect, 
such an escape into what is real 
and not hard, not hard at all. 

Kika Dorsey

is an author in Boulder, Colorado. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature, and her books include the novel As Joan Approaches Infinity (Gesture Press, 2023) and five poetry collections: Beside Herself (Flutter Press, 2010); Rust (2016) and Coming Up for Air (2018), both from Word Tech Editions; Occupied: Vienna is a Broken Man and Daughter of Hunger (Pinyon Publishing, 2020), winner of the Colorado Authors’ League Award for best poetry collection; and Good Ash (Pinyon Publishing, 2024).

Her poems and stories have been published in Freshwater, The Columbia Review, The Comstock Review, The Denver Quarterly, and The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, among other journals and anthologies. Her work has been nominated numerous times for the Pushcart Prize and for Best of the Net. Currently, she is a lecturer at the University of Colorado in literature and creative writing. In her free time she swims miles in pools and runs and hikes in the open space of Colorado’s mountains and plains.

Author’s website: http://kikadorsey.com