Gretchen Primack
Covid
Who was the pangolin,
caged
in the truck, in the stack,
in the market
What could her body,
balled protection no protection,
smooth nail scales no protection,
do but uncurl and mark us
When did her cage unstack
from the hens above,
the pig below, the dog
alongside
When did hands pull
her smooth balled body and slit
her throat for its tonic blood,
boil her skin for its scales,
cut her tissue for the pleasure
of meat
Where moved the first virion
in her body—eye, neck,
heart—
did its twisted ladders
course a thousand times,
a million through the mouths
of her cells before the hand
came down on the back
of her neck
(And the pig below,
the hens above, what poisoned cells
course through their dread)
How do we fill our bodies
without her body, the hens
above and the pig below
and the dog alongside, leave
their lives and deaths alone,
leave their cells alone
Why can’t we
To tear someone from her life,
to cage her, to let her blood
for our habit—
did we imagine no consequence
Do we see it now
—Submitted on 03/25/2020
Gretchen Primack is the author of the poetry collections Visiting Days (Willow Books, 2019), Kind (Post Traumatic Press, 2013), and Doris’ Red Spaces (Mayapple Press, 2014), as well as the chapbook, The Slow Creaking of Planets (Finishing Line Press, 2007). with Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary co-founder Jenny Brown, Primack co-wrote The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (Penguin Avery, 2012). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, FIELD, Poet Lore, The Massachusetts Review, The Antioch Review, New Orleans Review, Rhino, Tampa Review, and many others journals and anthologies. A passionate advocate for the rights and welfare of non-human animals, Primack lives with several of them, along with a beloved human named Gus, in New York’s Hudson Valley. She has taught and or administrated prison education programs since 2005.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.
If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.