Sandra Meek
Still, with Judas Goats
Project Isabela, Galápagos
Selection began the terror: how I loved
my new necklace, His glittering noosed ear
always upon me. When He came first
from the sky, when He slipped
the hood over my horns, stood me
onto my shoulders, I felt a sting,
a clip, a brightness distancing
my body. As what had quickened in me
stilled in His hands, I knew He couldn’t bear
to share me. Shot with the needle
dripping unending desire of others
for me, didn’t I dutifully draw
my kind from their caves, making again
our little society? Forgive me, those days I almost
forgot Him. When the five-bladed sky
powered its seraphimed shadow
upon us, how we ran, I
with them—the ones who’d mounted
me, the little ones racing still
for their mothers’ teats—how they dropped
to their knees, their legs snapped
broomsticks, leaves still spun from the glossy
corners of their mouths, their fur
glistening with rain-sleek roses, lipsticked kisses
blown from their bodies. But wasn’t I
the beloved, the one left, taken again
under His wing, until it all again
began? How many times this occurred
is beyond my measure. Finally, I could gather
only those like me, the startled girls,
each of us taken in to believe we were
The One. We knew each other
by our war-slicked eyes, the echo
of our sutured, future-emptied bodies,
how we each wore the charm of His listening
around our neck. And no more
did the sky empty upon us, no more
did He come for us; the grass grew lush
under our few hooves, for we did not
increase, and the great ones who had long
withered inside their domed shells
began again to move among us.
The ones we now knew all
had been done for, though we were left
freely to eat what we would, what would have fed
so many lost we’d led. O God
in the Whirling Machine, didn’t we well
bring your weather down?
Now we bow our heads only
to the recovering green.