1743: The Collecting | Arlene Kim
"The Collecting"
Arlene Kim
Sister keeps collecting dead things. Bees and rag-winged dragonflies.
A frozen mouse, teeth bared like a prize. A crow, butterflied open. She
pleats them up in her apron and keeps walking. Why do they find
her at the last, the dead sparrows, the muskrats, the prairie dogs, the
red squirrels, the spent tatty-sail moths. Then, yesterday, a spatuletail?
It's a long way from here to Peru, she thinks, carrying him home to
snap small portraits, make a cast of wing, snug chin feathers into an
embroidery circle, bury him primly in a box of gingerbread, his strange
tail tucked so. It is the history of the forest, she says, of ways we get lost;
I would like to say how it all happened; I would like to put it right.
This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me./And I'd say, What?//And he'd say, This-holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich./And I'd say, What?//And he'd say, This, sort of looking around.
Arlene Kim
Sister keeps collecting dead things. Bees and rag-winged dragonflies.
A frozen mouse, teeth bared like a prize. A crow, butterflied open. She
pleats them up in her apron and keeps walking. Why do they find
her at the last, the dead sparrows, the muskrats, the prairie dogs, the
red squirrels, the spent tatty-sail moths. Then, yesterday, a spatuletail?
It's a long way from here to Peru, she thinks, carrying him home to
snap small portraits, make a cast of wing, snug chin feathers into an
embroidery circle, bury him primly in a box of gingerbread, his strange
tail tucked so. It is the history of the forest, she says, of ways we get lost;
I would like to say how it all happened; I would like to put it right.
This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me./And I'd say, What?//And he'd say, This-holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich./And I'd say, What?//And he'd say, This, sort of looking around.