Diane Kerr
Impala
Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?
—President Donald J. Trump, January 11, 2018
let our next president be
the shirtless You-Tube African guy
up to his belly-button in oozing mud
thick rope around his chest
wading into a vast watering-hole swamp
when he first reaches her and takes hold
of the floundering terrified
let the panicked animal kick him
deep in the gut
mud sucking and pulling
both of them down let him stretch his own rope out
wind it around her too
let him struggle struggle and struggle saying
nothing
then let him hoist her back-end her flanks
her legs heaving her lifting her
up again and again dragging her let
him inch his way to shore
let the onlookers watch and murmur
keeping a steady pull on the mutual tangle
hushed by what they see
this love this nobility
and when they finally reach dry land
let man and impala lie there a few seconds
exhausted and still
you and you and you
bring clear water enough
to rinse her eyes her nose her
muck-weighted body let
the man rinse his mud-slimed hands
loosen the rope let her rise run
return to her grazing.
Diane Kerr is the author of Butterfly (Cherry Grove Collections, 2014) and One (Parallel Press, 2007). Her poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Pearl, Poetry East, Southern Indiana Review, The Diagram, and Zone 3, among others. She holds a MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, and has received fellowships from the RopeWalk Writers Retreat (a program of University of Southern Indiana) and the Hedgebrook Writers in Residence Program. She has taught writing at the University of Pittsburgh and mentors writers through the Madwomen in the Attic Workshops at Carlow University in Pittsburgh.
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