Immolatus
By Yusef Komunyakaa

She had her feet in the trough,
Nosing into the golden corn,
When Daddy did a half spin
& brought down the sledgehammer.
She sank to the mud.
An oak branch bowed
As they tightened the rope
To a creaky song of pulley wheels.
A few leaves left
For the wind to whip down,
They splashed hot water
& shaved her with blades
That weighed less each year.
Snow geese honked overhead
& Sirius balanced on a knifetip.
Wintertime bit into the ropy guts
Falling into a number-3 tub
That emptied out in a gray gush
Like the end of a ditch
Choked with slime & roses.
Something love couldn't make
Walk again. I had a boy's job
Lugging water from the pump
& filling the iron washpot.
I threw pine knots on the blaze.
Soon her naked whiteness
Was a silence to split
Between helpers & owner.
Liver, heart, & head
Flung to a foot tub.
They smiled as she passed
Through their hands. Next day
I tracked blood in a circle
Across dead grass, while fat
boiled down to lye soap.

Immolatus Copyright © Yusef Komunyakaa. From Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa, with permission of Weskeyan University Press.

Copyright © 1997-2007 by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.

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