Toad Skin

Listen to Barry Goldensohn reading this poem.


On a dirt road, a paper-thin dry thing
like a black parchment cut-out of a toad
in mid-leap, partly sideways, drawn by a master,
now boneless, as if it never had bones.
Only the tough skin survived the flattening
by one of the rare cars here. Poor unwary thing.
How much of us will last, tough, stiff,
cured by summer sun. Our better towels
outlast our flesh. Are Nazi lampshades
holding up? Shrunken heads? Mummies?
Count on bones. Stone monuments. A few poems.

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