She hated how they fascinated me
those living statues with their glassy eyes
their varnished scales and long backs still prehistoric
they sat on shelves in craftsmen’s shops
narrow snouts always pointing up
mouths frozen open
filled with deltoid little teeth
still
somehow
hungry
I loved putting my hands on them and running fingers
across tanned bodies lacquered to an eternal wake
imagining how alive those caiman must have been
*
In an old album there is a yellowing photograph
of my father
tall and lean and young and wearing overalls
behind him are mounted house-sized wooden drums
I recall them spinning slowly deliberately
“So the hides never sit in their emulsions,”
but turned and turned and turned - disembodied
– on the back is written: Guyana Tannery 1985
*
He placed his skins in buckets in a shed
my father built himself in our backyard
a place where my mother never went
he tanned them with cold precision
tall glass beakers filled with formaldehyde
and aluminium sulphate and sulphuric acid
in passing conversation he’d explain to me
pressed against the furthest wall
“To preserve their hair roots,”
while I ripped synthetic strands free of dolls’ heads
when no one was watching
he’d comb the knots from matted fur
running his callus fingers over clumps
careful not to damage skin
even as he yanked them loose
my mother believed that changing the nature
of a thing was always an act of force
he’d flip the skins over and with a blade
my father built himself
he scraped the excess flesh away
the bits normal people never saw
the decaying underbelly of a life
and then back into solution they went
little by little
over long silent hours and all of a sudden
“You have to raise the pH slowly,”
lowering his strips of colourful paper
into buckets of decomposition
I’d watch the wet chemical change
like he was changing
like she was changing
and when the paper was right
he’d wash his creations with
an unfamiliar tenderness
caressing the patches of brown
“Time for a fat liquor,” was the last thing
egg yolks into coconut oil lavender or rose
and with his bare hands he massaged potions into wet skins
like apology after all the abuse
hanging them in a cooling evening shade to dry
these beautiful imitations of life
hiding their gruesome history
*
I was ten the first time I went hunting
with my father for animal skins
I watched the butcher take it off a cow
right there on the abattoir floor
I never looked away even
when my father started packing
it with bags and bags of salt
rolling the bloody hide
with his own bare hands
I imagined him rolling cinnamon
but his fingers were too fat for that kind of work
“Four hours, that’s the window we have, before rot sets in.”
*
In yellowing photographs that my mother never looks at
there are jaguar skins and ocelot skins and anaconda skins
and in one there is a man standing at our gate with a giant anteater skin
and there we are in the background my mother and I
mounted on our porch – she is tall and lean and imitating life
though she tries and tries and tries - disembodied
if I could only run my hands across her
and wonder how alive she must have been
About the Creator
Trish B
Writer of fantasy, fiction and the occasional brooding poem. Willing accomplice, experienced antagonist, flip-flop Jedi, lover of words, forests, dragons and gummy bears.
Comments (1)
Your poem captures deep reflections on life and transformation. Thank you for sharing.