Page 13 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015
P. 13
Dark Matter: Women Witnessing - December, 2015 Issue #3 - EXTINCTION / DEVOTION
Debra Magpie Earling
from The Lost Journals of Sacajewea
in the fog-brutal days when backs of buffalo scab with ice
and the weak calves
fall to attendant wolves.
Lewis and Clark are shooting game
gray clouds tumble birds
falling from the gun-hazy sky---
Fawns mewl in the frosted grasslands
Red guts steam snow and the
Hooves of deer and antelope
click in the trees
slaughter-hung where wolves cannot reach them.
The woods are haunted by the silver eyes of dead animals.
But these things are always and survival and
these white men have not cached the summer berries
haven’t split the rye grass to seeds or twisted the black moss
to chewing ropes for winter hungry days.
Now a blood scent rises in the bowl of sleep.
No one speaks about the woman
dying in the frail rising of a killing day.
A woman hard-frozen in the field
Her trail marked by the blood of the hundred pounds of buffalo
she carried.
And the sleek footed wolves trailed her,
wove weaved* a tight trail around her sniffing
the bitter wind she carried.
The razor snarl of their teeth chewed the meat off her back
down to the column of her bones.
But her life was so powerful
even in death she is still
standing. Her rigid spine
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