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Calf-Bearer
- University of Arkansas Press
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T E M P L E C O N E Calf-Bearer I dreamed myself a calf-bearer last night, one of those giant, rope-veined statues excavated from the Acropolis, a brown calf cloaklike across my back. It was the long day of sacrifices, the air filled with fearful bleating, the slick stench of burned guts, and black flies storming above the grease flames for a taste. This calf, though, was calm, its fur still sour with morning milk, the pale, swishing tongue not raspy but soft as wet cloth on my cheek. Marble steps climbed to the altar in hundreds, infinite but nearing end. I gripped above the hoofs, waiting for tendons to tense, flinch, buck, kick, but no struggle came. Amid the ringing knives, I felt only soft ribs sucking in air, a dank hay scent blowing against my neck I had fifty more calves to bear up that day. I remember smiling. I must have been smiling, distant, archaic, like the marble statues themselves, whose faces are always the same, shining, from the terrible knowledge that sometimes seems like joy, that it is never their own holocaust to which they go. The 2000s ❚ 273 ...