18
syllables Sacrifice
The light of the moon ricochets off the bulrushes and projects itself into a moose. Your foot on the brake is doing mouth to mouth. C’mon. The minute is overweight and sweaty. All you see is a wonderment of nonchalance. This beast has swallowed the woods and is transporting them across the highway. You hunch, convinced you could drive under it. You hunch because you’re facing something both horny and holy. Doesn’t everything important start with that same impulse? Your heart in the passenger seat
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needs its asthma pump. Have you seen its asthma pump? Your heart in the booster seat kicks the back of your seat: Are we there yet? The night is looking out the window at its own reflection. You call out to your angels, you pray for giant cartoon hands to pull this moment from its bones. This is how you were raised. Desperate. You are not in good shape and now you are skidding. Up close the moose is an elegance of scraggle and you succumb. To die with this new idea of beauty. The car is a curtsy before everything wild on a trespass of highway. And you are the chosen apology. Your hands loosen. When you look back up to it, it’s no longer there, and days later: was it ever? -excerpt from Outskirts (Brick Books, 2011)
Sue Goyette Sue Goyette lives in Halifax and has published three books of poetry and a novel. She currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Dalhousie University. www.brickbooks.ca
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