“TRASH PANDA” by Josh Sherman

I want to be a guy who goes bald
and tattoos stubble on his head
I want to be a girl with a bad thigh tattoo
but a pretty face
I want to be born into a family of astronauts
because failure would be reasonable
—if not inevitable

I want to be the dude behind the wheel
of a Dodge pickup truck 

with faux testicles
dangling from the bumper

who ran over a raccoon this evening
that had already been hit
as it tried to crawl onto the sidewalk
using its paws

which still functioned like paws (somehow)

and not care

Instead, I am in bed crying about a raccoon
and the way the wheels rolled over its torso

—

Josh Sherman is a Toronto-based journalist with fiction previously published in Hobart and poetry in Back Patio Press, Neutral Spaces Magazine, and Okay Donkey.