Stuck

"According to a 1993 press release from the Butterball company, a woman called the emergency hotline on Thanksgiving Day to report that her pet chihuahua had jumped into the cavity of the family's turkey and was stuck." -- News of the Weird, 1995



He is of the desert, a tumbleweed tuft,
scrap from some great cactus combing its hair in the wind.
His too-bright eyes recall the fervor of pilgrims

crossing parched earth; his acute lament
like the shriek of cicadas on their one afternoon of sex.
Who dares point the finger? The wisest

among us has fled the safety
of hard ground. After we are swallowed whole,
we ask: how shall I hide my nakedness, how shall

I surface? When we look up, all we see
is the temple of the ribs, that holy cave. This is the tender trap,
the place where the heart lived. Here we can swim,

really swim, in the idea of love.
The heat of happiness lingers in every cavity.
The sound of it: thump thump, thump thump: keeps

time with the breaking waves,
with the schools of fish like schools of hearts,
drifting through the sea, drifting through the nets.

Now comes the huge hand of destiny,
squirming through the opening like a giant squid.
This is it. Just when we think we’re stuck, we're caught.

( Believe It or Not)