Sara Biggs Chaney

GIRLS, BEASTS
RUSSIAN PHOTOGRAPHER TAKES
STUNNING PORTRAITS WITH REAL ANIMALS1

 II. Brown Bear

Come to me, terrible body.
Let the camera cure.

To your blood sap
I give my soft part.

I smell my death on your belly
and I do not flinch.

Your face               a cannon
on the hinge of my neck

still I hold              the pose,           the play
of light against our earthly circumstances:

How we move, seamless
as a razor slices silk.

III. Snake

Could we be flames
the color of warning?

You        with your molten way
like a river walking

my child’s face swimming
in red vapor

Who will strike first?

 

1These poems are inspired by the photography of Katerina Plotnikova. [http://500px.com/katerina_plotnikova] The poems are inspired by her photos and their symbolic association with the famous Cluny tapestries.

_________________________________

Sara Biggs Chaney received her Ph.D. in English in 2008 and currently teaches first-year writing in Dartmouth’s Institute for Writing and Rhetoric. Her first chapbook, Precipice Fruit, was released by ELJ Publications in October, 2013 and her second chapbook, Ann Coulter’s Letter to the Young Poets, is forthcoming from dancing girl press this summer. Sara’s poems and flash fictions have recently appeared (or will soon appear) in Word Riot, PANK, SunDog Lit, Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, Menacing Hedge, Whiskeypaper, and other places. You can catch up with Sara at her blog: sarabiggschaney.blogspot.com.