The Hunter's Wife

A woman's chore
is to mend
the clothes
and scrub them
clean; the men
carve the hunted

beast

cleaving it
joist to joist.

A dress I make,
the world I sew
button to hem
like eyelids,
like a perfect
voice

I sing

of splitting seams,
of removing pins.

Between the eyes
of mountains, the hips
of hills, the deer
move graciously then
disappear; the hunters'
aim loosened, torn

like stitches
I have pulled.