The Mink, and: Last Chores
Rent from DeepDyve- The Mink, and: Last Chores
THE MINK
Each morning before schoolshe runs her father's traps,a thirty-minute walkalong the creekbed where darkness surrendersto the cone of lightfrom her headlamp.
The mink she's caughtholds still in the snareas she reaches into the backpackfor the .22 pistol that belongsto her father, only to be drawnif the pelt is worth killing for.
Danger, her grandfather says,is peering into the eyesof the animal you plan to shoot.Simply place the muzzleat the back of the skulland squeeze the trigger.
She's felt the recoilin her hand, like the shakeof muscle when she playswith the rat snake that livesunder the porch. But beforeshe can click the safety off,the mink's eyes pull her in,until she stares out from a skullthat is not her own. [End Page 36]
She's surprised not to feel fear.Nor does she harbor hope.A simple resignation to waitfor the bars grasping her legto open, that strange, toothlessmouth yawning in boredom.
She remembers what the minkremembered: the comfort of water,its song rubbing against stone.If freedom finds her again,she'll sing a hymn of thanksto the moving current she's savedwithin her chest.
When she was a girl she swamin the quarry, diving from a ledgeinto the sky's reflection.That's what it's like inside this skull:legs kicking deeper into a rock-cut pit.
And she wonders what the minkmust think of its new body,the uprightness, the loss of fluidity,but also the weight of that gun,the decision whether to let her goor to bring this body backfor her father to skinand sell at market. [End Page 37]
LAST CHORES
My sons weigh more than I, one measure of manhood.They help me gather stone to build with, wood to keep uswarm. Still a few apples in the tallest branches. No needfor a ladder. I want the fruit to fall in winterwhen deer will draw back their lips and gnaw.First I'll till the compost, sow some rye.The blood-leaves of tupelothresh the late sunlight: veined, [End Page 38] every pulse slowing, as we herd the long dimnessof approaching December into the deepest partof the hollow. [End Page 39]
Todd Davis is the author of five poetry collections and a limited edition chapbook. He edited the nonfiction collection, Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art of Basketball, and co-edited the anthology Making Poems. His poems have won numerous prizes and have been published in American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, North American Review, Missouri Review, Gettysburg Review, and other journals, and he teaches at Pennsylvania State University's Altoona College.
