Friday Poem: "Pulling Ticks"

The black Lab in this poem, Chrissie, belonged to our parents' best friends, the Coffrens; our cousins-by-choice, Tracy and Frankie, were tasked with clearing her of parasites after she had been gone for hours on romps in the meadows and underbrush of rural Poolesville. These kinds of rituals—sacrifices?—brought a small degree of power and terror to our wild, outdoor childhoods.

Pulling Ticks

The hand wants a smooth, warm place:
behind the thick flaps of the black Lab’s ears,
the soft fur under her collar.  There we’d find them—
some still flat chitinous tabs, anchored whole-head and resolute,
but some that had been feeding for days, clustered like grapes,
engorged and ready to drop into a patch of Queen Anne’s Lace 
somewhere and burst into a thousand ticklets.

Fingers evolved to dwell, pull, and worry,   
so we’d pick the full ones like overripe tomatoes, 
careful not to squeeze.  Their tick-skins had stretched, 
marbled brown fading to uniform tan.  
Head dwarfed to a pinpoint at one end, legs helpless.
We’d fill an ashtray with them, smooth heavy buttons, 
some still attached to gray mouthfuls of dogflesh, 
or wearing black Dali moustaches of retriever coat.  

When we were done the dog would grin 
a wet summer dog-smile, and romp off to collect more.

Someone would produce matches then and we’d begin:
first, drop the ones that could still run to the patio, and one by one
set the match-heads on them.  They would spread like hands,
nailed to the cement by sulfur and blue fire, legs spreading
then curling back as they burned.  We saved the full ones for last,
sometimes they were so full we could hear them pop
when we boiled the blood inside them.  They would deflate
into black splashes, sizzle out the matches, and we would
roll them underfoot until they were nothing, atoms scattered
beyond the possibility of this shape, beyond this tiny intrusion, 
beyond the shell of our silly beautiful horror.

This poem originally appeared in Parting Gifts Vol. 12, No. 2.