I am this garden’s official rabbit. I am the rabbit the owl wants. I am the rabbit eating the
lettuces a day before you plan to pick them. I am the rabbit scratching the flea behind my right
ear. I am the rabbit pulling fur from my belly to line my nest. I am the rabbit that can’t count.
In winter, I am the rabbit digging through snow for windfall crab apples in the side yard. I am
the rabbit chewing hay pulled from the hayrick where the horses feed. I am the rabbit leaving
prints in mud, snow, and dew grass. I am the rabbit made of glass, made of wood, made of
china. I am a sleep rabbit, a tide rabbit, a shame rabbit, a moon rabbit.
When my father got old his chest caved in. He was an immense young man, going fat during his
middle years. He was one who went without a shirt when mowing the lawn or sitting on the
floor in the living room leaning against the couch, arms spread across the seat cushions, taking
up more space than any other man. He let me sit behind him and massage his shoulders and rake
his hair. My fingers came away smelling of man oil. When age and heart disease robbed him of
his strength it was fiction to him. He acted large and therefore was large. If he was alive he
would claim he could still lift a calf over his head without a qualm. There are no calves in the
slumping barn anymore. Nothing to prove with the rabbits that have run of the place since my
brother, who is also tall but stringier, thought he would like to raise them but that it would be
easier to let them loose rather than deal with feeding and caring for them every day.
Sexing turtles is all about vents and concave and convex. Caves have stalactites and stalagmites.
Belly buttons are innies or outies. White towels mean I’ve grown up. I have sat on a white
towel and bled. The smear like tie dye makes me cry. Back to my red-eared slider and
wondering if all females bleed? I stand guard over the washing machine at the Laundromat
protecting my colored panties and red streaked towels from embarrassment. Pour hydrogen
peroxide on the stain and watch it bubble. That is the homemaker’s tip of the day. When I have
a boyfriend I will go into a tent for one week a month and hide. That is what the women of the
bible did. I will take my turtle with me. She with the high domed shell packed with eggs.
Two white goats, named Luck and Kindness, though I have little of either. Their nubbin horns
were burned out yesterday by the Amish farmer down the road. They bleated sorrow in the
night. I carry my lantern to the barn, and a flagon of ointment. This is the hour dripping fog
hides the road, and I remember your off-hand kindnesses. You waded into the accident to carry
out the woman I will call her. A handsome knight squeezing between twisted metal to her.
Home, I remained in the birthing barn kneeling at the flank of a hard breathing goat. I asked you
to get the medicine. You never had a feel for goats. That is why you would rather save her and
only remember me as afterthought. Once you held her, I became mist. I was just the woman
living up a gravel road, the one enamored with clover, chevre, and goats. These are the things
you laugh about with her. That and the smell of the small white barn. By the next birthing, I
give up on your return. I understood about her even before there was a her. Remember when I
was the focus of your kindness? You walked into my squat, warm, light-spattered barn, breathed
a sigh like you were home and said goat. I was all about believing then. Now you have her to
love without these goats. In my barn, I decide kindness would be sleeping in straw. I am a
goat mother.
The gung-ho pig went shopping for a cat. He wanted pure bred, but nothing as talky as a
Siamese. Maybe a Persian to sit on his lap and be brushed every day. He will name her Lilac.
She will come when called. Other pigs will be jealous. So will the donkey. Ha! to the donkey.
He stands in the field all day chewing hay with a common calico cat on his back. He is of no
use. He won’t pull a dray, it is beneath him. Or too heavy. The pig thinks he is weak. Still,
they might stand side by side with their cats, content. The pig carries a kitten home in a sack.
Turns out the pet store made a switch. The Abyssinian is all hissy and sprints into the hay mow.
She wants to be alone to lick her paws and nap. There is no lap sitting here. The donkey sniffs
his stuck-up sniff and rubs his ass on the shady cottonwood tree.
Lisa J. Cihlar's poems appeared or are forthcoming in The South Dakota Review, Green Mountains Review, Crab Creek Review, Blackbird, and The Prose-Poem Project. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her chapbook, “The Insomniac’s House,” is available from Dancing Girl Press and a second chapbook, “This is How She Fails,” is available from Crisis Chronicles Press. She lives in rural southern Wisconsin.
ISSUE:
S P R I N G
2013
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