Welcome to another installment of our weekly feature — Pick-a-Poem. Every week we choose a new poem to feature here on the blog in the hopes that you’ll find some new poetry to read. These poems come to us from Poetry Daily, which is a great website that features a new poem every single day. This week we’re featuring So Legged, So Footed, and Who’s Left to Care? by Allison Hutchcraft.
According to her bio page on Poetry Daily, Allison Hutchcraft has had her work published in various places, including American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, and Cincinnati Review. She currently teaches a creative writing course at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.
So Legged, So Footed, and Who’s Left to Care? by Allison Hutchcraft
So legged, so footed, and who’s left to care?
So your days bottomed out, so your luck stuttered then stopped.
So here a foot,
a pinioned wing,so ankle, thigh, and shoulder blade.
So here your weight, the heft you heaved, so tiny feathers
cleaned out by spring.Now absolute, now by-gone blur—
you’re bottom in a bottomland,
dead dodo of the morgue.So here your head, your outsized brain,
your stomach they called greasy,
your throat that rang.So legged and footed, so loosened
from one world—you used to sleep undone
beneath the moon: gun-barrel
moon like a mouth
about to open wider.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s featured poem! For more of these, click here.
— Jet Fuel Blog Editor, Mary Egan
