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The Family Pet by Tara Mae Mulroy

October 1, 2012 Contributed By: Tara Mae Mulroy

As a boy, Nathaniel careened around the yard,
drooling, braying, fist in his mouth, always running;
the family duck always chasing him, always watching him.
When it caught him, its beady black eyes bright,
it puffed up, rocked its head like a pendulum on its spindle of a neck,
honked, pecked him in the chest.
His mother always came out to beat the duck off him
with a rake or broom, but the duck always gave chase,
hateful in its blind, dumb way.
The family duck later flew away.
Nathaniel later flew to a desert,
humped through it with a platoon.
He came home with one leg,
his upper lip curled like burned paper.
He told stories of the family duck:
of how he said it hid in a cave, grew like water.

After Nathaniel said the King called him,
he told his wife he was going hunting.
When he returned, he filed his neighbors
into the living room and told them:
he approached the duck’s cave holding just a spear.
The family duck drew from the shadows of its cave,
its great neck twisting like a serpent,
balancing the ship of its skull on a pendulous wave.
He slew it with just one throw, severed the sinewy neck;
its blood-soaked bill, blank eyes
staring up at him from the ground;
its useless body,
now just the color of wood and snow,
bloodying the side of the cliff face.
He brought the head home with him,
clutching it by its iridescent green feathers,
hung it above his mantle.

His little wife shook in a corner.
His neighbors blinked, never saying a word,
filing out just the way they came.
Nathaniel motioned to the empty mantle,
told his wife whose mouth hung open,
Make sure to pick the cobwebs
free from its ever watchful eyes.

Return to table of contents for Issue 6 Fall 2012

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: October 1, 2012

Further Reading

The Heights
by Robin Reagler

Hoohooooooo a man kneels down before an even more powerful man his hand imagines a cat with lonely fur curtain            seltzer weapon          lover as the train whistle scratches the face of distances a powerless man lives with phrases stuck in his head the barber’s neck, the barbarian’s necklace and weather frets as it […]

Two Poems by Luis Alberto de Cuenca
translated from the Spanish by Gustavo Pérez Firmat

A witch gave you a pair of legs
(and other things I won’t mention).
Satisfied with your new body, you set off
for dry land. It was August and nobody
was surprised to see you on the beach,
naked and smiling

UNTITLED by Osip Mandelshtam (translated from the Russian by Tony Brinkley and Raina Kostova)

In the raw, moist forest, with a freezing measure, an impoverished light-beam sows the light-world. I am lingering—like the gray bird in my heart—incurring sorrow. What do I do with this wounded bird? The dying firmament fell silent— from its clouded tower, someone had taken the bell— and there height stands, mute and orphaned, like […]

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