Thrush Poetry Journal
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Teresa Dzieglewicz
​

The Only Vegetarian at the Branding
 
I like this—my knee on its neck
        coarse calf hide filling the hole
                     frayed through my jeans.
With my elbow, I press the flat of its cheek
              onto hoof-stomped dirt and dead grass
that tangles like hair. My thick braid hangs
 
 
                         across his body, an echo
            of the rope that dragged him
from the aluminum pen where his mother keens
             and men yell she won’t eat ‘em
                   but she sure can wrassle ‘em.

For them, I dig my knee deeper,
 
 
              grip tighter and pull back
his jerking leg, turn his belly skyward, like screwing
           open a tobacco tin. The men holler for me.
Cody, my classroom aid,
             who I see usually stuffed in a child’s chair,
                    teaching kids to count, pulls the buck knife
             from between his teeth, gently
                                     slices the thin skin of testicles,
             tosses them in the bucket filled with balls,
 
 
pale moons rivered with blood.  Some days, I want
              to be a man.  A large one. Somebody nobody
             would ever interrupt or call pretty
                                      in dwindling gas station light,
        someone you would never follow in a gold car,
hanging out like a loose tooth, yelling things I could do
                        with my mouth. 
Cody’s brother, in a beige baseball cap
             pulls the iron from the branding barrel.
          For him, hot metal is money, a job,
                                                the weave of the land,
 
 
but, I, who catch spiders delicately
               between magazines and juice glasses,
walk them to the prettiest bushes; I, who once
                       bathed a chicken, massaged her hip for hours
           to free an egg; I who teach my students
                                   power is for sharing, a rope to pull each other up,
I’m the one proud, hollering now
                   as he touches iron to skin.
 
 
            Only in the shower that night,
as the scent of burnt flesh,
                charred fur unweave from my hair,
                                    spiral like smoke around my wrists,
do I wonder what wire fences
           I’ve let grow in my chest. Do I wonder
                       how to be the woman
                                                 I say that I am.
 
 
For dinner, Cody’s mom made everyone steak,
            my pb&j on the side of the tray,
                        white bread already absorbing
the blood. In the cramped yellow kitchen, his brother
           throws testicles into hot oil. Ms. D he yells
you can’t leave a branding without eating some balls.
             They’re free range, Cody offers.

                         Because, I want anything
                                      but weakness, I slide the hot chunk of flesh
             into my cheek. It resists the point of my teeth.
It's....rubbery, I say.  Hard as fuck to chew.  




Teresa Dzieglewicz is an educator and current MFA candidate at Southern Illinois University where she worked as an Editorial Assistant at Crab Orchard Review. She received a scholarship to New Harmony Writer's Workshop and her poems have appeared in RHINO, South Dakota Review, and Crab Creek Review. Her poem "Stranger, thank you for giving me this body" received a 2018 Pushcart Prize​




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