Читать книгу Saudade - Traci Brimhall - Страница 10

The Last Known Sighting of the Mapinguari

Before she died, my mother told me

I’d make the monster that would kill me,

but what crawled toward me was not

my lost daughter manifesting as myth —

this was someone else’s death creeping

through my field, butchering my cow.

I recognized its lone eye and two mouths.

Perhaps it mistook the lowing for the call

of its own kind. I didn’t mind the heifer,

but her calf circled, refusing to leave even

as the creature pulled out its mother’s tongue,

fed one of its mouths and moaned

from the other. The intestines glowed

dully in the moonlight. The calf bawled.

The disappointed mapinguari sat,

thousands of worms rising from the split

heart it held, testing the strange night air.

I’ve outlived all the miracles that came for me.

My mother was wrong and not wrong,

like the calf who approached the monster

and licked the blood from its fingers.