Pictograph: Falling Buffalo
       

Finger-pads pawed the crusted stone, wetted with ochre and tallow, smeared finger-lines to bind them, as if the side that were alive needed contact with the other half. Here in our beds, covered with wool, and there, the stars. We, who were once rock, are moving now, though we are supported by bone. We, road-weary and indoors in our minds, the indoor mind, the social one, worried about others. The finely painted buffalo is drawn upside down, which could signify that it is dead. Or, caught in the vortex of trance, what the painter might have made of the electric register. We were grazing, then running, then the ground, which is all we know, suddenly opened up and betrayed us. Violence of hard earth. The massive heaviness of the others. Body count, the oldest count of all.

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Copyright © 2015 Melissa Kwasny All rights reserved
from Pictograph
Milkweed Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission