Slugs

Who could have dreamed them up? At least snails

have shells, but all these have is—nothing.

Small black antennae like fat pins wave

as if they could take in enough to get them through.

Turn them over, they’re the soles of new shoes,

pale and unmarked as babies. They flow,

the soil itself learning how to move and, moving,

almost staying still, their silver monorail

the only evidence of where they’d been.

And they die quiet, or at least (thankfully)

out of the human ear’s range, between two stones,

under heels, shriveling in salt or piss, at the tips

of sharp sticks. Fight back, I hear myself say,

do something. Don’t just take it. But they die

as they had lived, exuding slime, like

the smaller boys, who’d just

stand there, miserable in short pants,

school socks down to their ankles,

school tie unknotted and askew, and flowing

from noses slow cauls of snot that

from time to time they’d lick or sniff back up

part way, until it flowed again, coating

the upper lip, falling into the mouth, mixing

with tears before anything had been done,

the fear itself enough, so even if we wanted

we couldn’t let them off. Sometimes it was

the knee “where you daren’t show your mother,”

other times the kick in the shins, the stick over

the head, the punch in the mouth, while they

just stood there, or double up, gasping

for breath, and we did it again.