For Pet Abandonment

Just past the Nevada stateline,
before the odd sprawl of Barstow,
home of the Alien Jerky in Baker,
or even the scribble of tarantula legs
of Joshua trees against the supernova sunset
making the 210 exponentially more exciting,
a sign warns $1000 fine for pet abandonment.
Erected in the wake of individuals
leashing their dogs, caged cats,
driving them onto the arid three lanes
from a road in nowhere, through nowhere,
to our poor modern attempt to surpass
the decadent pinnacle of Rome,
listening to the Beegees, the radio
kicks in the Beatles, they start to sing along,
dog smiling in the rushing wind,
lips flap like half-mast flags.
Some walked them out a ways
across the hard sand and rock,
leashed to a tree out of sight,
others left in cages to broil
in the Death Valley oven just meters
from the rush-rush-rush of SUV.
I thought about that, in the bathroom
of the Baker Coco’s, toilet a mounded marsh
of excess sealing the little brown poop
from both air and possibility of flush.
I thought about the story I heard in high school,
when Alzheimer’s was bursting into
the collective consciousness of the 90’s,
displacing AIDs like a dirty white hat,
about the 90 year old woman who gifted
a puppy she’d wrapped in October
to her, now completely fucked up,
great granddaughter on Christmas eve.
There are worse things to get in a box
than a dead puppy, but they are few,
and most readily available in Vegas,
where even a town 100 miles away
can’t stand the smell of its own shit.