Yonex Buys a Bear Trap

Years ago I bought a Hungarian bear trap for my cowardly daughter. A big, steel cage: about six feet in diameter, eight feet long. She never wanted it, left it in the yard. Day and night it sits on my lawn. Like a shark with all its skin melted, leaving only bone. It’s rusted over time. Beautiful, in its neglect. At night I see the neighbors peering from their houses. I see them point, shake their heads. There’s that Hungarian bear trap, they must say. Maybe we’ll join hands, encircle it, chant like Druids. But I doubt it. Sometimes I take it out, drag it around the neighborhood like a balky dog on a leash. I like the way it rattles, sparks the blacktop—swarf trails of rust and slag. One day this jogger follows. I keep dragging the Hungarian bear trap—faster, harder—and she keeps following. When I can’t take it anymore I turn. She’s jogging in place near me, watching. Her red body smells like grass cleaned from a lawnmower blade. Whatcha got there, she asks. My Hungarian bear trap, I say. The way she stares makes me uneasy and sad. We vibrate in place. I don’t know what to say. Neither does she. Tectonic plates shift beneath us. Dry leaves scuttle by.