cane toads

parents on a back porch
smoking cigarettes
in the presence of their child,
a shirtless boy sucking on a Twizzler

I immediately want to attack,
to jump the several balconies
and tear apart the parents into
chunks of loose meat and carcinogens

I am the baneful cane toad
leapt into western Australia
in the 1930s to devour the cane grubs
statues in my honor built beside credit unions

I see mother’s face in the grass
she acknowledges me placidly,
and my mouth opens slightly in awe
I feel I’ve gone one step beyond
I live for these moments

shouts from inside:
wife and mother-in-law see a moth
I am stridently summoned to the
role of reluctant executioner

I am buckled by the pun of mother nature,
my tissue-fisted and half-hearted charge
permits the prey a providential escape,
but the gladiator takes his lumps for his lethargy

outside, mother’s face is gone
but in the branches a deviant image
part Big Boy, part Howdy Doody,
part Colonel Sanders,
and a courtyard of brick-and-pipe faces
in the walls of the apartments around me

I see my tomorrows winking at me.
reprieve, reprieve.