Word Problem
        for Diane Glancy

One hundred eighty thousand bison skulls
are stacked into a mountain featured here,
the caption reads, or so some archivists
approximate—an educated shrug.
This faded photo from 1870

blurs everywhere except the ghostly horns,
and they are blank as photocopied tests
a substitute hands out, each desk a sigh
she cannot name. If prayer-dance returned
the herd, if we peered resurrected furs

from our lookout on a cliff, would we count
migration's steaming snouts across the snow
and mark the mothers from their calves that strayed
behind in search of clumps of onion grass?
Or would sunset rifles smear the ice

so red again we'd drop down to our knees
so not to slip, butchering by starlight,
contented as the dapper merchant perched
atop the pile, assured his grin is profit?
The caption states the best market price

a ton of skulls might fetch was fifteen bucks.
Most shipped to China where they were ground
for fertilizer, though some were fashioned
into cups. Teacher, I have a bellyache.
Collect my test. You'll see I've left it blank.

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Copyright © 2019 Adam Tavel All rights reserved
from Beloit Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission