TO A TIMBER
WOLF
For this I will need a blank page
a sky in absolute focus over the same few
miles
of Alaska an airplane's simple shadow
and when I am ready
a grave full of snow that will never
fall here
a thin mother wolf embracing
with purposeful forelegs a fresh carcass
from which she is gnawing the lean
chest muscle free for her pups
as the gunner's binoculars twist her
gold eyes
close as a lover's though if he were
anywhere near her
she would have no choice
but to strike with all eight hundred
pounds per square inch
of the glorious teeth God gave her for
tearing
so it is easier doing away with her from
the air
not even killing really just training
the gun's eye making it see clear inside
her
neutral heart and back out
to the pellet of blood on the dazzling
sunlight
now making the gun want one of the beats
now making the other poor beat
be the bullet
--Frannie Lindsay
Copyright © 2007 by Oberlin College.
May not be reproduced without permission.
FATHER-IN-LAW
AGITPROP
It's before coffee and after everything
else.
A Sotho policewoman waves us to the side
of the road with a flashlight. 100 kilometers
behind us, Johannesburg goes to sleep.
Corn,
purple, orange, weapon. Johann says,
Here, an hour in a cell is a death
sentence.
He pulls his hands from the steering wheel,
lips trying to close over the end of a
Peter
Stuyvesant. Handcuffs. A pig on a spit.
Gumboots in a souvenir shop. How quickly
we would sell our misery and our love.
History
is this ear of corn, and this Giant Kingfisher,
licking blood from an eel. His wings
mock the Southern Cross and I pray
for Andromeda. The policewoman speaks
in mirrors, almost in retrospect,
side-views. Her wings
bury our brandies
with Johann's 100-rand note.
We will live today
to change our socks
and lower the parking brake,
this time, as if, into the earth.
--Matthew Gavin Frank
Copyright © 2007 by Oberlin College.
May not be reproduced without permission.
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