It's easier to empty a body here

By Sarah Summerson

 
buckling and giddy
twenty feet high I hear the death rattle
 
through the headset, the walkie talkie calling
out and down the knots of tree, my father tracks 
 
red pearls from a pulled chain, leapt from neck to kitchen floor rolling
five hundred feet, the hollow on the hillside, me tracking
 
that mound of flesh, a small swaddled thing 
like a heart given out. 
 
once, my aunt cut a deer with a butter knife
the pull of two bodies in the early dark, 
 
necessity is hooked and toothsome, 
the second crack of hips breaking
 
shatters in the empty sound, he asks me to hold the hooves
open, and tears her body wider than a birth I turn
 
my face into the orange blossom of shirt, death
smells like rotting nettles and wet wool.