[this film is a montage of bears eating]
by Emelia Kamadulski
Montage: bears eating salmon, slippery and silver; bears eating dusty strawberries growing close to the ground; bears eating honey from the hive; bears eating honey drunk bumble bees; bears eating honey from plastic bears; bears eating honey from the keeper’s sticky outstretched fingers, glistening like their own wet noses
Scene: a bear coaxes seed from the feeder as patiently and urgently as if she is making love for the first time
[somewhere upstream of this poem a woman learns the breadth and pulse of an untouchable romance]
Montage: bears eating blackberries to eat the thorns; bears eating dandelions to eat the roots; bears eating soft beds of clover; bears eating honey with earnest eager tongues; bears eating honey from a stupid woman’s gentle hands; bears knowing the whole time whose hand is in whose mouth
[in this film I am both the woman and the bear]
[who then is the honey?]
Montage: bears eating Kentucky bluegrass like sick dogs; bears eating apples from the trees in your backyard; bears eating blueberries; bears eating basil; bears eating your garden one tomato at a time; bears chewing and chewing on greasy papers plucked like plums from the stinking spilt garbage
Scene: a hungry bear takes a bird feeder in her claws, shaking, shaking, shaking
Montage: bears eating ants; bears eating bluebells and wasps; bears eating ants by the battalion; bears eating ants that march like TV static on their speechless grasping tongues
Scene: a bear transformed by her hunger becomes a threat, becomes a woman, becomes rapid, ravenous
[I don’t think I am capable of falling in love unless it was with you]
Montage: bears eating nothing; bears eating themselves by eating nothing; bears eating themselves honeyed paw first; bears eating me slowly, honeyed hand first; bears eating themselves by eating me; bears eating themselves by not knowing what they were hungry for in the first place
Scene: a bear electric with hunger paces beneath a bird feeder not knowing where else to place her hot, wet maw
[and as the bear devours herself, tell me, is it love fading like birdseed slipping through its split plastic case? & if it is not love, is it tenderness? & if it is not tenderness, is it light? & if it is light, then is it dawn or dusk? & if it is dusk then what is revealed in the darkness? & if it is a bear lumbering through the moonlight, then who is she approaching? & and if she is approaching you, then who is the bear? & if I am the bear, then who are you? & if I am the bear then why do I love you? & if I am the bear then why do I love who I love? why do I love who I love?]