Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.
The Last Meal of the Iceman
He had eaten alpine ibex, which yields a greasy meat
satisfying to a hunter, rich in fat that burns in the cells
Like napalm. He was dozing, his wrenched back propped
against a boulder, when an arrowhead emerged
In his left shoulder, and his crazed skull limned a hatchet trauma.
The tale of the CAT-scan was suspect. Therefore the body,
Dead 5000 years, must rise and be broken again.
Break bread with me. Break faith. Break down. Break in.
The ibex stood numinous on the snowy stone. That spring, the world
was glacial, and the creature died in a fountain of blood
Freezing as it fell. He killed it for the body the others
killed him for in turn. O hatchet, break the ice. Fossilized
In unconsciousness, he entered a different cold. Perhaps his soul
waits in a purgatory like the meat locker of the afterlife,
Until a scalpel opens the stomach and the last meal is exhumed
by unimaginable strangers with a basin and a clinical spoon.
-TR Hummer
Read the Rumpus Review of T.R. Hummer’s Ephemeron, and check out the chat he did with the Rumpus Poetry Book Club
