Anamnesis

This city is mapped on my bones.
When my memory gets too thin, I 
feel for the notches beneath my skin.

The brain is mush. Literally. Cingulum,
viscous matter folded upon itself and upon itself.
You cannot hold a brain fresh from the skull.
It slides off the sides of your hands.

Science says when you drink
to blackout, you aren’t wiping memories clean.
Rather your brain stops recording.
The letters scatter like beads and disappear
into the dark gutter.

But my body remembers. A touch, hot 
breath, the clinking of glasses—clean notes
with footsteps keeping the beat.

Percentage Change Since 1975 in the Portion of Americans Who Hold Hunting Licenses: -38

The deer carcass hangs from the rafter in the garage, blood pooling.
Small rack, a young buck—his eyes are black. Blank, but with an 
iridescence. The shade of a housefly.

It is the tongue that perplexes. Gray, the tip poking 
from the mouth line. It is surprise. The quick shock 
of a strike to the face. A tongue flicked up to catch the blood.

In the car with my dad, he stops to point out a speckled fawn
still beside his mother. He croons and with big working hands,
he pats the backs of his daughters with wonder at the miracle of life.

-Note: The title of this poem is borrowed from Harper’s Magazine.

TRISHA DAIGLE

Trisha Daigle has worked as a community organizer, a teacher, and an editor. She is poetry editor at Red Bird Chapbooks and is a graduate student in creative writing at Hamline University where she works as a writing consultant and graduate teaching assistant. She lives in Minneapolis.