by Karin Falcone Krieger
No relief from the ache in my teeth. I yearned to sink them into living
meat. PBS Nature offers a snow leopard. “She and other great cats go for
the jugular, drink the blood of the stunned animal...” Ibex staggers and
sways. The sharp toothed mammal returns for more drink.
I wished the swollen sun would send a torrent of blood and stunned
pigeons. It would be as rain was once. I dream a greyish snowfall that
leaves black puddles of cool blood.
“The great cats must clamp necks of large prey for as long as an hour to
kill them. Not like hyenas, jackals, or wild dogs that eat their prey alive
by going for the scruff or the belly.” They hang on until the pack
arrives to feast on the guts of wildebeest, digested grass perhaps also
one unborn.
The many foods not eaten in the refrigerator are monuments that one
day an appetite will return for rice as well as rain. Rare steak in a
restaurant as a show of faith just left me for a sickness.
Over the bar the news says a doctor fell asleep on his feet with a
beating human heart in his hand. She died. A central wound better not
be red. I look at the glass in my hand and realize he is looking at me.
“I pierced my tongue not because I was afraid of needles, not because I
was unwilling to speak...” I saw the snow leopard tattooed on his shin.
That made it very easy to talk to him.
