Limp wings, the neck
droops over my hand. Clean slit
from the cloaca, I peel back
skin from the breast-- gently
not to stretch it. Grit
of cornmeal, borax. How neatly
it all fits together. Flies.
Outside, a blackbird squawks.
Rough bumps
of the feather tracts under skin;
each feather a bump. The innards
text-book perfect: gleaming
liver lobes; the heart
clean as a thumb; trachea--
windpipe-- fluted hollow
holding the breath. Inside
out, the wing's white bone
juts up; the thigh.
My hair falls into my face-- so easy
to dig out the skull,
pry out the eyes. Outside,
the air all brightness, warm bayberry:
light, whole and beating. I think
what's to keep
me from dissipating, evaporating,
like a breath
or the blackbird's call?
I make a body from a stick
wrapped in cotton, imbed
it in the skull. My hands
sticky and caught
with pieces of tissue and down;
some in my hair, on my brow.
When I'm done, the guts
a small pile on the newspaper.
The birds, wings folded,
stare straight up to the ceiling.
Eyes filled with cotton,
wide and blank as if
they've seen some mystery
I don't see, whole-- fluted--
which means furrowed, clear.
--Talvikki Ansel
From My Shining Archipelago, winner of the 1997 Yale
Younger Poet's Award (Yale Univesity Press, $12)
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