A-Minor

by Sara Biggs Chaney
 

In this version of the dream
       men line up in order
to return her soul in slices

Each a hang-dog butcher
     soup-eyed     hind-sliding
pinching her slivers in fingertips

unfurling her like a frond
              her sinew crumpled
beyond salve

The worst, she knows
            will hide his eyes
and bare his stumbling hunger

at the finish, he will fall
            in her incurling arms
and beg a benediction

 which in no version
        of the dream
can she refuse

 always       she receives
         sick with him
she receives

Sara Biggs Chaney received her Ph.D. in English in 2008 and currently teaches first-year and upper-level writing in Dartmouth’s Institute for Writing and Rhetoric. Her most recent chapbook, _Ann Coulter’s Letter to the Young Poets_, was released from dancing girl press in November, 2014. Sara’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in RHINO, Sugar House Review, Juked, Columbia Poetry Review, [PANK], Gargoyle, Thrush Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. You can catch up with Sara at her website, sarabiggschaney.com