July 8th, 2010 - Rowan Quince Buckton

Quince

This wasn’t the first challenge. I should have known

better than to scold you for brandishing the B-B gun. You’d

skinned the chipmunk, nailed the body to wood scrap,

drowned the coat in salt to preserve it, left it

leaning against the edge of my bed. We’ll kill anything

that eats the basil. Nate shot himself in the foot or

the elbow, a ricochet that bunched his skin

into an ugly ruffle. I named the duck that couldn’t walk,

carried him everywhere. You warned the ones with names

always die first. I couldn’t figure out how to make the job

less precious: grasping the new-born turkeys one at a time—

an hour to empty a single coop. The other hands

would scoop them into a fluttering heap. But why not dote

on the markings of each feather, that swollen split pea of an eye?

I killed the first by accident, its leg mashed beneath

the metal water bowl. They were moths frenetic with light,

wings all beating toward something,

a dreadful circus parade of knobbed feet and open

mouths. Someone picked up the chicken by the foot, I remember

the carcass hanging. Bigger than the baby turkeys, a dead full-bodied

thing. This was before you learned how to cleave

an animal’s body in two. Before you said you

knew the best way to kill them. I’m sure they didn’t mean to leave it

in the bucket, didn’t intend for the flies

or the stink. At first we thought

the tomatoes had soured, but then its odor turned

like the summer the mouse died inside the wall

and we had to wait the stench out. So I was the one to dispose of it,

not because I was the least squeamish, but because

I was the most afraid.

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*Illustration by Catherine Villalonga.

Rowan Quice Buckton grew up along the Hudson River and holds an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in PANK Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, Grist Journal, and elsewhere, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and received an honorable mention in the 2018 AWP Intro Journals Project. They live in Vermont, where she works as a librarian and serves as Senior Poetry Editor for 3Elements Literary Review. Find them online at rowanquincebuckton.com.

Rowan wants you to contribute to The Okra Project which dedicated $15,000 to create the Nina Pop Mental Health Recovery Fund and the Tony McDade Mental Health Recovery Fund. They are asking the community to match their commitment by donating, as you are able, monetary support to sustain this work or donate one of your scheduled sessions with your Black male/female therapist. Visit www.theokraproject.com.