John Belk

the young immortal plane

     after Brian Kershisni

​​​here lies a buffalo   here lies a mountain of buffalo
here lies a wrestler telling  stories with the soft animal
of his body
here lies a goldfinch & a starling    skinned
by the neighborhood cats
 
in 1872  one-point-eight million buffalo were killed
in the fields of North America
i visited once            the long grass like
swells of air released from the chest of a dream
wildreed & petrichor        tinseled heaving
of earth & sky     i bottled the wind   carried it
into the mountains with buffalo skin & a knife made of stone    
i put it to sleep by the fire
 
& i looked for things with my tool      a saying    
scry     a cotton gin & a chokehold      the barrel of a gun
in 1873 another one-point-eight million buffalo were killed
here water evaporates as prayer
here lies an ancient ocean      salt       billions
of scattered seedheads          a good story
or two    both cruel & kind    drawn from the bones of a man   
the skull of a slow-moving sort of cow

---

definition of the continental shelf

n.   the segment of ocean floor ownable
by men    where light still travels      
cookie-sweet & fading   all energy and   
flamboyance    a crown of thorns  
we’ve had since we were young
 
the man says survivors are always happy
because at least they are alive    they sing
their songs       tell tales of their hurt     
give it a spine and feed it       ragged
on floors of silent seas
 
the man says slavery is in little things
a tea set from Saxony    cufflinks    a sweet-meal
biscuit from Leeds    12 nautical miles
offshore is the furthest a nation can claim
beyond that  :   the sum of all we can’t hold
 
but shelves are curate       emancipate  
meant to show & to tell      a bird feather   
beads        the friend we hurt       a dream     meant
to scrawl our mark on the curve of the earth
to die with crumbs on our faces ;

--
John Belk is an Assistant Professor of English at Southern Utah University where he directs the Writing Program. His poetry has recently appeared in Sugar House Review, Crab Orchard Review, Madison Review, Salt Hill, Kestrel, San Pedro River Review, Worcester Review, Sport Literate, Poetry South, and Arkansas Review among others. His chapbook "The Weathering of Igneous Rockforms in High-Altitude Riparian Environments" is available from Cathexis Northwest Press. His scholarship can be found in Rhetoric Review, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Composition Forum, and edited anthologies.