Coyote on My Shoulder

by Wesley Rothman

On the veranda overlooking a golf course sunken in dark, you described yourself as a coyote on my shoulder. You had never spotted one before, still haven’t, besides Wile E., or a chance showdown through a phone screen, a stare down through time: when the scavenger was recorded jaunting through suburban San Diego & the moment of your watching. By the course, somebody asked everyone to say, instinctively, what our favorite animals are, suggested that they reveal how we believe we are perceived. Among the mosquitoes, somebody else reminded us of the resemblance between dogs & their humans. & it always is a showdown (or is it a stare down?). They say a stare down has to do with pressure, not giving in. They say a showdown comes with finality, like facing a “Big Boss,” the standoff tips toward bodies colliding, toward raging mouths & wild teeth, contusions, tearing. I said, quick-like, “meerkat.” Somebody looked me in the face, waved her eyes up-down-up me, & grinned. I’m shaped & skittish like them, meerkats. She was right. In one version of this I forget my animal, and you visit me in wide daylight, spectral, not miniature like those cartoon consciences, nor your human dimensions. You are just a whole ass coyote — slender, untamed fur, lost-eyed. When you visit, since my shoulders aren’t so broad, you crescent my neck, hinds on one side, fores the other. You see as I do (or I see as you do), your snout siding my temple, belly warming my nape. These visits come when I can’t keep something to myself. As coyotes do, you say little, think much. I show you the scraps of my decisions, hold out the rabbit thigh of my day, & you teach me that not everything must be devoured. I keep needing reminders of this. You pant a sentence or two, you leap to the ground & jaunt (how else?) into vapor & dusk. In another version, I am meerkat, & you have me between your paws getting the last scraps of meat off my bones with your tiny front teeth.