God as Edie: The Knoxville Zoo Elephant Who Crushed and Killed Her Keeper, Stephanie James, 14 January 2011

Abstract

God as EdieThe Knoxville Zoo Elephant Who Crushed and Killed Her Keeper, Stephanie James, 14 January 2011 Susan O’Dell Underwood (bio) They had to believe she knew not what she’d done. Pent up, spent of a thousand, thousand wasted days,though, maybe she meant that murderous misbehavior,the one myopic tragic move left in her DNA,no longer able to judgedistances or love. In the colonnade of her bones a stampedehad waited for the trunk of her to swing,perhaps, her tusk a wish to brush a human clavicle,let go the cavalcade of snortsher trunk in exhortation held backevery other time before just like a blessing. The lively blithe blonde lifted upwardher final gift, an offering of communion towardthe open grey-pink, wrinkled moutha precious snack, unwitting sacrifice,without a breath of hesitation at the evening’s altar. There is no way to punish this calamity: The keeper’s lovely body fell, it falls, it is falling,the memory of the falling held above all else, [End Page 114] a plodding memory capable of holding every equal sorrowinside that tree-bark skin and lumbering bone and blood,inside the mind inside that massive drudgery of skull. [End Page 115] Susan O’Dell Underwood Susan O’Dell Underwood directs the creative writing program at Carson-Newman University. The author of two chapbooks, her work has appeared in Oxford American, Rock & Sling, Crab Orchard Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology: Tennessee. Her first full-length book of poems, The Book Of Awe, is forthcoming from Iris Press. Copyright © 2018 Berea College