Before he went to feed with owls and bats
he wrote a letter to his grandmother,
asking who could stand this new stepfather
whose first act had been to kill the pets
he'd kept inside - the half-blind vole
that lived in his schoolbag, the white moth
he'd replaced once a week, the sloth
his poor Dad had brought him from Brazil,
the green Indian parrot that couldn't speak,
the hedgehog he'd saved, the scorpion
he'd smuggled from Morocco on the plane -
all dead, except the banded rattlesnake
he told his gran was hidden in the shed
waiting to be slipped into that bed.