Desert Highway Pantoum, and: The Animal, and: The Hares

Abstract

Desert Highway Pantoum, and: The Animal, and: The Hares Hannah Sanghee Park (bio) Desert Highway Pantoum I drive from Point A to a pointthe highway slims to.My future is this bright aperture,this needle-eyed beyond. The highway slims toa lone lane. Gauges limit me—this need will lie beyondthe road, to the siren singalong alone. Language limits melately. I’ve lost the pulse ofthe road to the sirens signalingmove to the shoulder. I wait. Lately I’ve lost the pulsecontaining me. Later I left (cowardmove) to shoulder the weight.Grief grew long in me, containing me later. I left, cowardto chance, and the wild vining ofgrief grew along with me.How I couldn’t go back to chance, and the wild vining ofmy fear without break.How I couldn’t go backin time. Begin. Sun’s well down, low. Answers my fear. Without breakI drive from Point A to a pointin time begging, Sun, swell down slow. And swearmy future is this brighter aperture. [End Page 36] The Animal Whatever it was, went fast. Felled wetby one gunshot. The ground listenedthrough its sour mushroom ears.The kill fell spilled and they darkened alive.I hate the world too wild and yet I am here.Everything that makes me up left violently—star and hominid and warring ancestor.Taught to lunge for the throat, throttling breath,body from head, voice from thought stillshaping on the tongue. To end a thingrequires steel and every nerveto never stop. That’s the trick of it.To burn the land until every treeis turtlenecked in char, wind carryingout its worst, until the air stinks ofsomething we’ve killed and can’t stop killing.The animal was opened to the skylike a grand piano. Its maggots pumpingtheir oily bellows in hunger.And everyone rubbernecking,a slack weakness the jaw wants to crush.To lure each eye to sleep—that’s the trick—to comfort, and then the god comes down. Fast I have already forgotten what hurt me.I bow to the new like a cut flower, hangdog.In the way these animals come circling,even after they’ve seen the worst of us—blood plugging up our heads, soakedin what’s theirs. But they forget. Foot before footto salt and bait, the outstretched handsmells so good. God, that could drive a body. [End Page 37] The promise of hope over cruelty.That what feeds you has already fed.It is what moves foot before foot toward you.Somewhere my end is marked but I will notknow it. I will only know this mercy. So faster and faster I feed, unafraid.And if this is really the fittest of me,what’s fated, what survived of me—forgive me. But look: I do not flinch. I eat,believing in this that I am being loved,and fill the eyes of my body until I forget. [End Page 38] The Hares Long-eared,they had long heardof the boys: the threats of their hands: the boyswanted their pelts:the winters unkind to their kind. This wasnature: alwaysthese little wars for resources. The haresbounded from themin a wisdom. They would lope up mountains,knowing their legsat birth were strong: come spring-loaded with kickand bolt. Born withtheir eyes as open as tree rings, they sawthe boys: hobbledby the known thunder of their treads: shoutingas they tried tofollow: failing stealth. Born helpless and weak,whatever madethem human was taught over years. [End Page 39] This wasdominion: thatno mountain was greater than want: that wantwas the mission.Now older, they chased the hares but this timedown the mountains.And the hares fled: haste flustered them: their legscould not find ground:their heads, their fine backs kept rolling down landbetraying them.Then the men pounced. Dashed them until they werestill. The men wereproud: they brought back the small corpses: they braggedover the shineof their beers and...