Time Taxidermy Poem by T.R. James Bray

We are taxidermists of time, trapping our feral lives,
echoes in the valley.
Our boundless times, surrounded in a surreal mist
a frozen instant.
The confidante and the adversary
Locked, posed, unblinking, our moments,
the animals we have. kept
An ostriched neck, before the kiss.
The gaze we ran with.
At full stretch, on hunches, in basements
and crowded community halls. Preserved memory.
Two headed goats and
grey squirrels bumming cigarettes, iced in a leaping gait.
The grimace of our beast
opens the startled stare of the mob.
Attempting to protect ourselves from time itself.
We store.
Over roof tops and hanging from balconies
stuffed just the way we intended.
Just the way we need them to be. Our memories.
As it was all happenstance anyway.
Stains on the bear skin rug, turned orange from time.
Head, mouth, jaws and paws.
The heat, the fire, the light
we remove the skin
find glass eyes
and remember,
our intimate creatures, not long for this world
posed
the way we choose to.
As tears roll from our cheeks
Some joyful
Some from sorrow