Not far from the car-parts warehouse 
near the highway underpass down the street 
from United Record Pressing, the world’s largest 
vinyl record plant a mile from Nashville honky-tonks
where colossal cowboy boots blink in neon, 
walking by Boone’s Creek right by 
Mrs. Grissom’s Salads where they package salsa
& pimento cheese. Who knows what shit flows
as it bubbles & foams? In this this city core,
where diesel fumes mix with smoke, I catch 
a red fox’s yellow flare. As the streetlight flickers 
 
on the fractured sidewalk next to the underpass, 
I turn at the intersection of Cathey & Hanford 
near tangled undergrowth. To protect her kits
as they romp around an abandoned shed
& devour picked-over drumsticks
from a KFC bucket, the vixen barks 
when I get too close. In the wild, foxes
can live nine years–but even by
when there’s plenty to forage, 
they rarely make it two
before they’re mowed down by traffic.