It is necessary that the heart slows.
This long torpor begins years before the act –
a pulse beat back
by barren stretches of want.
A lifetime of famine suppresses a body
into the shape of malice.
Waking is craved
and the trigger to press blood into motion,
life into hibernating extremities,
is found in the blasting recoil of a life,
the dragging upward
to hold a massive skull
whose eyes never opened,
to bare teeth into a camera’s flash.
Blood surges in the quickening
triumph of a flicked finger,
but slows again, but slows again.
Chambers clog with mounted heads
and glass eyes as the languishing form
muddles its heart’s plea for
more – more – more.
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Congress Rolls Back Obama-Era Rule on Hunting Bears and Wolves in Alaska [NPR]
Bonnie Rae Walker is a writer living in San Diego. Her work has appeared in Right Hand Pointing, Red Paint Hill Poetry Journal, Whale Road Review and more. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and can be found forthcoming in Noble/Gas Quarterly, Typehouse Literary Magazine and the 2018 Sixteen Rivers Press political anthology. To read more visit www.bonnieraewalker.com.
Photo by Jeremy Vessey.
