Life and Limb
Sometimes I
think of myself as
an octopus working
without an arm. But a shell’s
reflection just showed
me I’m the severed limb
still feeling along
for delicious things to
feed a body no longer
connected to me.
You’ll forgive me
if I don’t remember
(in my headless state)
how long it’s been
since I was attached to
anything that sustained me,
if I pulled the guillotine
chord myself or waited
while someone else did the job.
Bodies sometimes grow
new appendages
but severed limbs don’t
create new heads / can’t
reattach to a viable
beating heart. But what else
is there to do but feel around
in this alcove for food. To
keep my head down (as it were).
Who knows maybe I’ll be the first
to make a new home
out of nothing.
think of myself as
an octopus working
without an arm. But a shell’s
reflection just showed
me I’m the severed limb
still feeling along
for delicious things to
feed a body no longer
connected to me.
You’ll forgive me
if I don’t remember
(in my headless state)
how long it’s been
since I was attached to
anything that sustained me,
if I pulled the guillotine
chord myself or waited
while someone else did the job.
Bodies sometimes grow
new appendages
but severed limbs don’t
create new heads / can’t
reattach to a viable
beating heart. But what else
is there to do but feel around
in this alcove for food. To
keep my head down (as it were).
Who knows maybe I’ll be the first
to make a new home
out of nothing.
Jenny L. Davis (Chickasaw) is a professor of American Indian Studies and Anthropology. Her creative work has most recently been published and Transmotion; Anomaly; Santa Ana River Review; Broadsided; Yellow Medicine Review; As/Us; Raven Chronicles; and Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance and exhibited at the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.
Art: Molly Dunham