Jaguar Erasure

by Suzette Bishop

As they got closer, the Jaguar sharpened his claws on the rock   wall off the last jaguar migration paths       bulldoze Arizona’s Sky Island mountains   Maria felt sad to die so far under the earth

More than 8,200 comments     opposing Trump’s waiver   immediate halt to wall construction

spectacular Sky Island mountains   the hard red body and obsidian eyes    a death sentence for jaguars in the United States    Trump’s disastrous border wall

hummingbirds passed, rushing towards the voice ripping this beautiful region apart

remote, mountainous terrain      Bird, Snake, Goddess corridors jaguars use    93 threatened and endangered species   there She sat, all the colours of the rainbow and full of the little windows with faces looking out

along the 2,000-mile border Bird Snake Mother shot a tongue of fire out of her mouth     without regard for 65 laws    They will return to Earth, on Being called Quetzalcoatl    miles of new construction      remote Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge, Tinajas Atlas Mountains and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument     there are animal gods                cutting off vital pathways

to reach food, water, and mates               ending the recovery of iconic species such as jaguar and ocelots in the U.S. speed border-wall construction from the Pacific Ocean to the Rio Grande Valley       

                               there are micro gods of all the subatomic worlds


Note: Erasure poem is constructed from Leonora Carrington’s story, “A Mexican Fairy Tale,” an interview with Leonora Carrington, and from the article, “Trump’s Border Wall Would End Jaguar Recovery, Bulldoze Sky Island Mountains.”

Sparkling Ice Plains *

One friend on the forum
can tell his ex-wife broke in
and poisoned his cats.

She’s messed with his truck, too.
We urge him, get cameras,
get security,

get a restraining order,
get the locks changed.
I learn the lingo,

psychopath, flying monkeys,
gaslighting,
how we loved,

and they just played us.

We take it seriously,
what the heart needs,
what the soul needs.

After such harm,
there are times
we keep each other from suicide

or returning,
having any contact,
checking their Facebook page.

Sometimes, I wonder if we were abused
by the same one.
Our avatars are beautiful,

the horse finding his footing in a murky stream.

*    2024 Longlisted, Montage of Misfortunes Contest, Black Fox Literary Magazine
Forthcoming in Eyes of Some Robbers (Dancing Girl Press & Studio)


Note: The title is a quote from “Little Robber-Girl,” The Snow Queen in Seven Stories by Hans Christian Anderson, 2006/09/25, http://hca.gilead.org.il/snow_que.html

Empty of You

Dedicated to patients who volunteer for ME/CFS research and clinical trials

offered her illness to science when I want my body to close with sleep, it lies open had a very active life wilting like a flower she began feeling faint the forest floor blanketed with pine needles she couldn’t hold herself upright paths leading us further from the stream had to carry her to urgent care

began her fight with myalgic encephalomyelitis glimmering between the pine trunks has largely been ignored light reaching through the pines fingered it bravely volunteered to participate in the research I trusted you would return us home doctors could not explain her symptoms the glass jar I place over it enlargement of her liver and spleen knows the ways to escape her daily function

pull me into the attic exhausted from sitting up to read leaving me with the ghosts not being able to interact with others in the reddish afternoon light she could barely speak with them twisting through the oval window she had to get herself up and moving suddenly in the aisle of the grocery store one of her daughters put up a chalkboard where she wrote down everything when I am without pen and paper so compromised I couldn’t even hear the birds sing my black shirt whispers to me able to start speaking with her family on the phone again

empty of you she could run basic errands such as going to the grocery store scream beneath my poems days of tests that carried significant risks beneath the ocean in a way that could undo all her progress smoothing and rounding us into small shells this could be the last exercise you’re able to do then spew us in different directions I felt like it was worth everything I find myself washed ashore to build the study’s database tightly curled, the sheet drawn back in waves



Note: Sections in italics are from “She suffered extreme fatigue for years. So she offered her illness to science.” By Leana S. Wen, The Washington Post, March 19, 2024.

BIO

Suzette Bishop has published three poetry books and two chapbooks. Her newest chapbooks, Eyes of Some Robbers and Unbecoming, are forthcoming. She has an MFA from the University of Virginia and a Doctorate of Arts from the State University at Albany. Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies and been finalists in the Northwind Writing Award and contests at Black Fox Literary Magazine and So to Speak. One poem earned an Honorable Mention in the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities Contest and another, First Place in the Spoon River Poetry Review Editors’ Prize. She has the invisible disabilities of ME/CFS and fibromyalgia and lives in Laredo, Texas.