Sarah Elkins

Going Home

“…the Swedish tailgunner who,
After twenty missions in the Pacific, chopped off
His own left hand
To get back home. No one thinks of him.”
—Larry Levis, “Irish Music”

He knows it must be done
in one blow,
that a second won’t be possible.
A job for a butcher,
his cleaver.
Or perhaps an ax
choked up so the swinging hand
stays close to the blade.

He practices first
on the writhing body
of a fish, cleaving in one stroke
the skin, meat and fine bone
of a living thing, learning to aim
at a point that might move
against his will.

Then, a whole chicken
pirated from the galley,
its cold, plucked skin sliding
loose from the fascia
beneath his steadying hand.
Surely, a chicken halved
in a single strike,
all that bone—
real bone and sinew—
is drill enough.

Then, to the whetstone
where the sharpening rhythm
of steel thrashing stone
is an echo
of his canvas overcoat
against the bulkhead,
the sea against everything,
of his will against itself.

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Sarah Elkins lives in southern West Virginia where she works as a freelance writer and marketing consultant. Her poetry has appeared in Sanskrit Literary Arts Magazine, Northridge Review, Summer Stock Journal and Rust + Moth; critical analysis in Kestrel. Sarah is in her final semester in the MFA program at Pacific University.