Dot Learns the Problem with Naming the Animals
by Erin Elizabeth Smith
At Tractor Supply, the ducklings huddle
under the gravity of heat. Dot cannot
refuse them鈥搕he throaty peeping,
their furious inconsistent sleep.
At home, Dot watches them fluff
and peck, hoover tiny pellets in beak.
As they grow, they splash in bowls,
six drenched puffs in a marshy pine bed.
She names her favorite, a Peking
who has nearly learned to smile.
She knows better, but the way it lets her
palm its plume, how it tumbles
in the bathtub like bear cubs
smelling of chlorine and down.
Dot can鈥檛 help but love the smallest
who hunkers in cold corners
while the mallards grow spindly
with feather and fight,
but when she finds it hobbled
and soaked, pecked by the Khakis
whose soprano has turned
to dark laughter, she knows
what she must do鈥搒pin the neck,
watch the sparked black eye
click off.
But she can鈥檛.
Instead she tries toothpicks, popsicle
sticks, all the ways you鈥檇 mend
a pinkie. She holds it close to her breast
where it collapses to throb and fever.
Where it becomes something that is,
at least for a time,
alive.