A COATIMUNDI ON A CRAPPY MONDAY

by Mather Schneider

It’s 5 a.m.
and still dark
when I pull my cab up
to trailer 82.

It’s a medical voucher.
Information: Ted Ols, 46,
destination Kino Medical.

Ted slithers out
of the trailer
slitting his
eyes in my headlights.

Did you see that?
He hisses
as he scurries into the back
of my cab.

What? I say. Where?

Over there, he says,
something in the bushes.

I drive away slowly, crawling over the speed-bumps.

He smells like a Coleman lantern
and is high as a fruit bat
from his morphine scriptfor a pain in his head no one has been able to
disprove.

This neighborhood’s going
to shit, he says.
The Mexican mob’s takin’ over!
Do you know what
they’re doing now? he says.

What? I say.

They’re smuggling Coatimundis.

Coatawhats?

From Mexico, he says, ugly
hairy things, big
on the black market.
I found one under my trailer the
other night, he says.
I heard something, he says,
and I got a broom and a flashlight
and I went outside and looked
underneath,
and these little yellow eyes
looked back at me!
I swear to god I could hear
the mother breathing!

In the dark he drills
holes in the
back of my head

and I just try
to make myself

as small as
possible.