02-25-2019, 05:43 AM
The Forty-Ninth Day
we put the dog in the earth and we waited.
it rained for a week. the garden grew a puddle, then a pond.
a tree stooped to the yard on the seventeenth day. it stretched limbs,
tucked head to ground.
the surface of the pond became knitted with worms. warm bodies,
engorged with amniotic mud.
the tree unrolled on the forty-second evening, stood tall. a miracle.
the neighbors watched from the fence.
the final night i didn’t sleep. my mouth ached – from wanting too much,
my mother said.
my father and i sat at the window all morning.
my hands were shaking i was so nervous.
he came at three o’clock, puffed, throat pulsed. feathers split out
of his body. he seemed to fill the whole porch.
my father was quiet. he has the same eyes, i said, the feathers are sort of
the same brown.
in the end we didn’t open the door. the turkey left in the evening.
my mother asked, what good does it do.
we put the dog in the earth and we waited.
it rained for a week. the garden grew a puddle, then a pond.
a tree stooped to the yard on the seventeenth day. it stretched limbs,
tucked head to ground.
the surface of the pond became knitted with worms. warm bodies,
engorged with amniotic mud.
the tree unrolled on the forty-second evening, stood tall. a miracle.
the neighbors watched from the fence.
the final night i didn’t sleep. my mouth ached – from wanting too much,
my mother said.
my father and i sat at the window all morning.
my hands were shaking i was so nervous.
he came at three o’clock, puffed, throat pulsed. feathers split out
of his body. he seemed to fill the whole porch.
my father was quiet. he has the same eyes, i said, the feathers are sort of
the same brown.
in the end we didn’t open the door. the turkey left in the evening.
my mother asked, what good does it do.