☀ Today's Poem: "Leg" Danusha Laméris

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October 15, 2021

Leg

Danusha Laméris

We're walking around the field by my house, Dion and I—
her dog pulling at the leash, collecting, no doubt, an array
of ticks in her bristly white fur—when we come upon
the half-eaten leg of a deer, gnawed clean along the thigh bone,
the calf still covered in its thin scrim of flesh and tawny fur.
The dark hoof, a fatted arrow pointing uphill, toward where,
we imagine, the rest of the deer might lie—a doe, I'm thinking—
deep in a grove of eucalyptus, carried off in the jaws
of a mountain lion. Dion pokes at the bone,
says, Don't you want to keep it! Look at that hoof!
The dog rolls around in the nearby grass, basking
in the afterdeath, wanting to carry a whiff of it
like a fine cologne. We keep circling the field,
coming upon fresh remains: the russet feathers of a hen,
fanned out, the plasticky stems still wadded together.
Past coyote scat. Then back to the leg. I turn to Dion, say,
I think it's yours. Take it.
She's had some parts replaced. At least one hip. I'm hobbling
a little on my bad ankle. Even on a good day, we're both fair game.
I look down the hill at the rusted tractor, fruit fallen
from the apple trees, haloed by a buzz of wasps.
We walk farther up the slope, over thistles and clumps
of dandelion, lean down to the stippled earth,
and revel in its decedent decay.
It's hot. The dog digs at a gopher hole. A hundred
miles away my sister-in-law is growing a small bouquet
of errant cells in her left lung. Others on her spine, her ribs.
No one else has her exact rasp of voice, her hands,
their stacked gold rings, her freezer full of turkey broth,
her wonky, bunioned big toe. Her long black hair.
Her life, the one she kept on living after
my brother died. Catching babies, cutting the rubbery cord,
wiping the bloody vernix from their brows.
I think of how I've come to call her sister, dropping
the suffix. We've known each other since
she was three and I was six. And I don't know
what a sister is if not an other, a fragile mirror, space
of tenderness. Female, and mortal, and afraid.
I watch as Dion takes a stick and digs around
in the same hole as the dog, who is now sniffing the loose dirt.
Sisters, I think, of the two of them, the woman and the dog,
happily engaged in their unburying.
And somehow, walking in silence, back the way we came,
sisters, I name the two of us, me and Dion,
rounding the path down the hill, back home.
And when I eye, again, the doe's skinned leg
lying in the loam, I think, for a moment, Sister
of the scrap that's left.
But it's only later, lying awake in the dark,
that I picture the tawny shadow
skimming the hillside, hidden by a clump of trees.
Sister, I think, of the lion that ate her.

from the journal THE SOUTHERN REVIEW

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T. S. Eliot Prize Unveils 2021 Shortlist
Introducing the finalists for the £25,000 prize, chair of the judges, Glyn Maxwell, said “Poetry styles are as disparate as we’ve ever known them, and the wider world as threatened and bewildered as any of us can remember....these are the 10 voices we think should enter the stage and be heard in the spotlight, changing the story.”
via THE GUARDIAN

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