Emily Harman

Recognition

Everywhere I turn so much is dead or dying.
The frost-blackened sunflowers in the garden, crows
pecking at their downturned heads. The silver hair
I pull from the base of my scalp, curled
against the kindling of nail clippings
on the bathroom counter. The tiny wasp
that burrows into the waiting flesh of the fig.
My grandmother, who can no longer move
her mouth around the word that is my name.
Yesterday, the doctor told us there is a point
when the brain no longer senses thirst.
It will be this desiccating that kills her
and there is nothing that we can do.
Still, I must tell you—
When I stepped over the rabbit, glass-eyed
and mangled in the tall grass, my mind
did not at first see its matted body
for what it was. Instead, a crumpled towel
speckled with mold. Deflated, white-spined
football. Untongued tennis shoe.
Fallen bundle of dirt-crusted granite.
I thought I could think such things into being,
but even imagination has its limits. This game ends
when I run out of ways to save the animal
by turning it into something less alive.

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Emily Harman is a poet based in the mountains and forests of the Pacific Northwest. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Fugue, Bellingham Review, Wildness, Harbor Review, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. Emily is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Montana, where she teaches creative writing and serves as Poetry Editor for Cutbank. She can usually be found outside.