Sherry Smith Bell, Homestead (Artist Website)
Drypoint/collagraph on Rives BFK paper, 22 x 30 in
Winter, cold. The calf comes raw
& covered in sebum. We
wash the hooves, smooth each heavy
lid, but the mother does not
want him. She lows long, as if
calling for return, her womb
an empty cistern. Later,
there will be wolves, the spark
of a cigarette. We will
say words like circumstance &
condition as we clear the
debris, draw arrows between
the moon & her heaving side.
A lexicographer, Blount first
referred to the cosmos
as an ascending horizon, as light-
bodied stars swirling into being,
the spaces within which we are formed
& sent back to Earth as gods. We are,
according to Blount, made of atoms
& golden particulate. You write
in a letter: my wife’s beauty is
evidence of a higher power.
Who can witness what goes on
in the forming, in the blast
of the smallest cell;
how the calf turned from his mother’s
perigee, sickened. All evening, I
consider the possessive form.
I think about how I am not your wife.