The Buck

His father had taught him to dress it 
in the field, to whet the blade 
and core the anus, clip the balls
then slit the hide. Run the knife 
pelvis to breast.

I watched him straddle the split thing,
struggle it off the tailgate, so careful of the rack. 
He was fifteen, sheened with sweat, 
desire as plain as the strain of each heft.  
For a truck of his own, a job 
after school, the impossibly soft hands of a girl. 

One year older than me, he seemed 
a man, his shoulders lit by the street lamps 
of our cul-de-sac, an October moon rising white 
beyond the vacant lot.

He said when you cut the windpipe right, 
the insides slide out with a single pull. 
Heart and liver, lungs and stomach, 
everything linked like pearls on a string.

Some boys love death more than anything.
Some girls need to look.
The buck hung from the rafters,
its bent neck so lovely, 
muzzle white, one chestnut eye 
staring right at me. My girl-heart 
caught in the crosshairs.

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Emily Ransdell’s work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Poet Lore, Tar River Poetry, River Styx, and elsewhere. She has been a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize and the New Millennium Writings Award, as well as the runner up for New Letters’s Patricia Cleary Poetry Prize. Emily has twice been featured by Ted Kooser in “American Life In Poetry.” She lives in Camas, Washington.