At The Museum of Everyday Life, and: On Calving

Abstract

At The Museum of Everyday Life, and: On Calving Sarah Audsley (bio) Keywords poetry, Sarah Audsley, flying, creation, myths, storks, livestock, birth, death, tourists, class, wealth, climate change AT THE MUSEUM OF EVERYDAY LIFE The theme this month: scissors. Last month:knots. From the plinths, in our hands, storks slide their legs back & forth, make tiny cuts of air& mimic striding, lifting their laden beaks, deliberate movements an upward chargeinto a darkened sky—wings, full-blown. When you’re serious about your sewing & crafting,you should be serious about your cutting, too. Stork scissors: birds, molded thin bladesas beaks; their eyes, a screw at the pivot point; each body the curvature of handles; the legs roundedholes, one for thumb, one for pointer & middle. The result—scissors & shears of uncompromising qualitythat will bring you years of cutting pleasure. Dear metal birds, tell us the difference in feeling between cuttingfabric or flesh, about the midwives who carried you in their kits. Blades through the slick of newness,the skin’s first brush with oxygen. Cut of the cord, a silent snip. Take wholeness & pull it apartto codify a sum of parts. Tell us so the “I” can fly [End Page 14] forth, so I can individuate from the flock& with this act of separation, take flight from any vantage. Which is to say, if I breakmy habit of believing in the myths, in babies borne to mothers from storks, in metaphor at all,what could be different. What might make sense. [End Page 15] ON CALVING The door handle, smooth from roughhandsopening & closing, a camera’s shutter on the scene:the round brown heifer calving on her own in deepnight without help; her warmslick clumpstwo-inch sawdust, stains the barnwood floor.I shamequake in this childdream. An alien form, afraid of its newness, the smell, I rememberthe men beckoned me closer to witnessthe calf stand on its own. How seldom to wonder is its own category, its own box to check off, a To-Doto classify as accomplishment. Instead, we followdirections, believe in mythmaking, alternative facts, progress. So. I believe the newborn nosetuggedat the mother’s teat, the way my mouth neverpulledon nipple, begged the body. Then, let me wonder at lightparticles, the Milky Way, lacrimal ducts,how my eyes spark when you appear, ghostmother,when I thought you were what I had to let go. The future is here: veal, so tender-battered & servedon cruises to tourists who clink champagne & chewas they watch the glaciers quicken with the warming, the slow moving turbines pumping & invisibleunder a tonnage of water. [End Page 16] Sarah Audsley saraha audsley is the author of Landlock X (Texas Review Press). A Korean American adoptee, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and a member of The Starlings Collective, Audsley lives and works in northern Vermont. Copyright © 2023 The Massachusetts Review, Inc