Wendy Taylor Carlisle
Take the least weasel, she said,
like every weasel, brown above and white beneath;
the mostly-albino ferret,
or the ermine, dark to light depending on the season
even take the wolverine,
that dark glutton, Gulo gulo, skunk bear
every one of these, true carnivores,
an instinct for the jugular and testicle
their names suggest aggression,
powerful paws, quick knife of claw.
The scarlet line from them to us, she said,
is a digression, dear ratel,
after we’ve dined out in Leningrad
on weaker friends,
the larger mammals like ourselves
are hostages to fractured logic,
our claims to unbloodied paws
while to our credit, honey Badger,
can never hide, how our white backs
can not disguise the sub-Saharan dark below.
…………………..
Note: During the Siege of Leningrad, in the winter of 1941-1942 there were unsubstantiated reports of cannibalism.
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Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives on the eastern border of Texas. She is the author of two books, Reading Berryman to the Dog and Discount Fireworks (Jacaranda Press, 2008) and two chapbooks, After Happily Ever (2River Chapbook Series #15) and The Storage of Angels. Notes about her poems online and in print appear on her website.
