Carrion

by Clara Bush Vadala

The blood is both my own and someone else’s. 

I do not understand why

all the blood I’ve lost 

over the years wasn’t saved 

in mason jars to turn 

to clots the size of plums, 

or made into jam 

to keep something alive

outside of my body instead of within it. 

I could not explain the feeling

of something kicking, because there was tissue 

in the way. So it was only

something growing, 

and not knowing what it was 

besides the static

of facelessness making gray 

echoes and sucking a skinny thumb

in a weird mouth without any lips yet. 

Did you know we start at the ass?

And grow toward the head? What the hell 

is this supposed to mean?

All of it starts, actually, in the middle 

of someone else. The middle

of me holds all my richest nutrient densities, 

if a raptor were to get a hold of me. 

Once I saw a raptor 

disemboweling a raccoon in broad Daylight, 

in the middle of a walking trail at a nice park. 

These things are supposed to happen at night! 

But there was this bird grabbing on a piece

of intestine and pulling it out like a pink ribbon, pinkening in the sun;

The bird magician-scarfed it, 

my God it was so long and pretty, 

and we walked past, but it just kept coming, 

out and out, as if he was drawing

A line in the grass: here is the dead thing, 

and here is how far 

the meal of it will reach, maybe 

all the way to the raptor’s nest, where little

skulls with beaks rear back 

to swallow it and swallow it and swallow it

and swallow it. Or maybe not far enough. Cut me open next, 

I want to know how many mouths

I am able to feed

Clara Bush Vadala is a poet and veterinarian from Van Alstyne, TX. Her chapbook, Book of Altars, was recently published by Belle Point Press. She has a full length collection, Resembling A Wild Animal, set for publication later this year with ELJ Editions as well. She is an associate poetry editor for Thimble Literary Magazine. Her individual works can be found in various in print and online publications.