How it Started by Mara Lemanis
How it Started by Mara Lemanis
How it Started
It might have started
with a nod,
a handshake,
a mute pledge;
we watched wolfpacks
break bread as one;
you gored a grizzly
foraging my promised land,
I clasped your hand
as in a pact
You took the bloodied
rump and legs
I took the fur and claws,
we tested a fair share
as one
before ten million suns
set on our pact
and fattened into treaties;
we brokered and then broke
our debts and obligations
the Deuteronomy of
what belongs to whom
and by what rights;
Within the sophistry
of civil spheres
we veil the gleam
our eyes make
when we meet,
we pledge fair fellowship
with social contracts
crumbling records
sealed with slings, spears,
chariots ramping siege towers,
cannons, tanks —
from primal clans I won the
bloody rights to your best furs
from primal clans you sued
to keep the thickest rumps;
that’s how it went
that’s how it goes
we grow great grizzlies still
and crown them
with majestic jewels
and fatten them
for pleasures of the kill
to do us proud
with gleaming tools
bold guns, sleek bombs
to help us keep on
breaking bread
within our human packs.
Mara Lemanis
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