Kelly Gray

The History of Taxidermy

We don’t know when the aunt and uncle decided to collect dead animals;

the wild sow’s face smiling, the thick neck adorned

with a gold ribbon- she said it brought out a festive cheer-

Although we know the origins of the practice were developed to transport the dead

from one world to the next,

and through European notions the industry of observation begun

The ornate casing

the home turned into a museum- the road thieves for you-

the cross bow bought and then stolen during a party,

replaced by guns kept in metal lockers in the barn

There are two types of taxidermy;

a specimen and a trophy

which the aunt and uncle used as symbols for their opposing arguments

about the type of life they would have:

The elk stepping out of the wall

or, the fox pulled off the road and recreated in likeness, a northern flicker killed

to hang in its mouth, wings cast out and up,

Or, the smallest Western Screech Owl,

hung above their bed like the crocodile

in the cathedral in Ponte Nossa, Italia,

Always twirling in the light with its talon’s extended

as if mice were running out of the aunt’s mouth when she wailed in despair

from beneath the sheet of night,

the quails screaming from the coop outside,

the partridge from the freezer.

I’m Having a Dream that Diane Seuss is Giving Me an Abortion 

Hers, eyes drawn as throaty ravens below a surgical mask. 

Hers, a braided animal tail of hair wrapped to nape 

beneath her cap. Hers, gloved hands hot 

from the backside of a box. She places 

miniature livers of songbirds across 

my eyelids, I swallow muscularity 

and lyricism as the laminaria expands. 

Seuss recites as Seuss recites. Small towns 

and blizzards bearing men into my veins, davens  

the room fleshed plus divine. 

Pre-curettage: she fits

my feet in stirrups, trails scabbed skin 

to purpled dahlia fields. A barbed wire fence trembles. 

She reads from my charts: the altar is now. Suction out 

my uncle's swollen lips, the place my father fell, my speech 

impediment and the moment my daughter’s arm 

cracked in two. All the sounds and after-silences.  

Leave the park entrance flanked by lions carved 

of stone bleeding red lichen, each paw relentlessly 

unmoving as a whizzing summer buzzes; 

children and flying dogs with expensive capes, 

two gardeners eating lunch in the gazebo where 

Harold and Maude was filmed, a coyote sleeping 

in the bushes, under the nasturtium plastic bottles 

marked with lipstick, the wrist having dropped it, 

let it go, I am starting to feel pressure as I look up 

Diane Seuss is pulling out an image of a child

in poem form, asking if I want to hold it, which I do. 

I take the wetted stanzas to my chest-- what is miniature

and mine—I look up at Diane and ask Can we make this holy

and she responds Just talk as God talks, so I cry, 

knowing us in fetal form, and

how good it feels to let go what we cannot keep.

My Tongue a Perfect Fit

Having forgotten that I ordered it, I receive a package. I undo postal wrapping until I have a scarf in my hands. Within fabric, pieces move like bones, as if, somehow, muscles are involved. I wonder, did I order wings, perhaps a dead thing. Half a fox or the haunches of a rabbit. Knives slide against forks as I pull them out. No longer a body, I lay silverware in formation along my dining table. From the 1800s, spoons look like miniature ladles. Some quite small, children with hands that used them for soup now dead. I pick one up, smell it. Run it under my eyes. The steel briefly sets relief against the swollen skin. I slide it in my mouth. There was a woman who lived next door to me when my child was small, when we first lived alone. She was known for screaming fits and too many pets, and we noticed when her house grew quiet. Eventually, they came to break in, caved her door in with men and uniform and still, the house was quiet. All they found was a freezer full of ermine, each little body half eaten, small forks left in bellies, tiny organs exposed to freezer burn. Now, a couple who plants perennials has moved into this house. The husband would spend Sundays with his chainsaw, trying to understand the relationship between trees and furniture. But he had no tools for nuance. No spokeshave, no Ryoba saw, no chisels. I hedged bets a baby would come soon, that the house would again return to silence, and it did. I wonder if they think of me. If they must see me. If they walk past my house at night and catch themselves looking in, holding the sleeping baby too tightly, embarrassed to see me in my robe, sucking on a spoon, moving my tongue into sinuosity, all the mouths that came before me, making stain.