The autumn my sister ate a pint of liver pâté, she claimed warmth like brushfire coals simmered winterlong in her veins
- The autumn my sister ate a pint of liver pâté, she claimed warmth like brushfire coals simmered winterlong in her veins
She cut the muscle and vitalsfrom the doe's smilingribs. I smelled its dark organ, buttermilk
soaked, combining with herbsand the juniper berries – littleglobes of stilled storm we plucked
from pine and leaf piles in the woodsbehind the house – in the cast iron,watched it swirl with brandy
and pack dense as gumbo clayinto her glass jar. She ate itby the spoonful, licking the concave
face clean. This is the womanwho said her period was likeslaughtering a gazelle in the forest.
I think of it, the paste of another'sthrobbing body, when my chest thrumscold. Think of my sister's hands
gloved in harvest blood, her hairdense and woody as browse, the sweatoff her skin rosemary, clove, and gin,
sharp as a bellyache and souras the wild overripe crab applesthat what she ate ate. [End Page 42]
Corrie Williamson is the author of two books of poems, The River Where You Forgot My Name, a finalist for the 2019 Montana Book Award, and Sweet Husk. Her work has appeared most recently in 32 Poems, The Southern Review, Ecotone, The Common, and Copper Nickel. She lives in Montana, and is at work on a third manuscript, Your Mother's Bear Gun.
