By Brie Huling
There was no one here to tell me I was wrong.
In taxidermy, you skin the animal first
like removing the skin of a chicken.
I’m casting my own form here,
but I am an amateur. It’s pretty obvious.
& you have cast me queerly, firm tendrils falling away. . .
The glass eyes don’t come until later if at all.
I am a pigeon pea.
I am a cowpea.
I am a split pea.
My coils are concentrated.
Crossed and desiccated.
A little tiny puzzle of wild guesses. Sprouting. Again.
Suddenly an invisible leaf or branch!
Paper-thin confusion.
A cabbage butterfly.
The layers are hardly limpid here.
It’s the slipping away of things.
You are a teeny leaf trembling on my chest.
I am trying to find a form for you without all the internal organs and blood.
A unicorn, a jackalope, a mermaid, a griffin the rogue of it all, please.
I am a legume.
I am a hunter.
You are in a museum.
Your eyes are glass now maybe plastic and still see almost everything.
