by Tim Duffy
I think of bodies shot through
the immediate flurry of feathers
perhaps a barking dog
that finds desire
buried in bloodied grass
struggle is the great sauce
of their process. They have faced
a trauma we keep at poem’s length
or the dirge of some of long-forgotten
song that tells us loss is rare.
Beyond the hills, the sun is starting to rise
and so the hunt is over
but the bleeding remnants of duck
will not scare, though the life is out of them
one will start back to life
in the doorway of his kitchen
and fly on broken wings from wall to wall
until the heart gives out
or his wife smashes it with a broom.
This is what we call cruelty
though I remember how freely our prayers flew over
that body and I saw it in heaven
crowned in feathers,
born again in glory, like a memory
of Paradise or something
just like that.
Tim Duffy is a poet, writer, and scholar with work in or forthcoming in Entropy, Longleaf Review, Open Letters Monthly, The Cortland Review, Rain Taxi, Empty Mirror, and elsewhere.