“There’s a way in which the poem has presented a place where I can atone for some of the things that are a part of the violence of living this way…How do we make something beautiful out of what we have to do?”
Running off is its own balm and its own source of enlivenment. Setting out into the recess of some far off fold in the landscape, away from the unintentions and misdoings that seep like grime to clog our thinking is the dream that keeps on giving. Sure, new responsibilities are needed and novel duties arise, but the point is never to evade work; it is to nestle into the right sort of work. That is to say, the work that feeds more than it consumes and leaves you satisfied with your place in the fold. So we find ourselves with this week’s glimmer of The Laureate Project in Maine, with Julia Bouwsma, who takes on the role of resident escapist to instruct us in her effort to run off into the world.
We Are Just Three Mouths
A rifle on my shoulder, I am in the henhouse again.
The scream is one pitch too high for human. The weasel
is a white scarf at her throat, pas de deux of feather and fur
I watch through my gun sight, empty metal eye
inches from its collar of snow, blast that shatters any dance.
The weasel falls back, starts to rise, as if it were easy, one motion,
no difference between the hen’s blood in its mouth and the red
hole spreading its ribs. I step on it hard: the flash of black eyes.
It claws, bites my boot. We are three bodies in soiled pine shavings,
three mouths. The weasel winces, eyes close, open—limbs stretch
into the last hard act of breath. The second bullet slips,
trembling, from my hand. I drop the gun hard, once. Twice.
But the weasel’s elegant neck won’t snap. I find the bullet,
reload, press into the pink-white fold of ear, pull.
Gunpowder in sawdust, a soft head slap. I reach down
to grasp what I have done. I lift it by the tail.
Courtesy of Julia Bouwsma, from Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017).
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Featured Sound:
"Rusty" | Sindrandi | Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
"Things to Sort Out" | Walt Adams | Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
"Petals on Dusty Soil” | Rando Aldo | Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com