The Buffalo
Neca
Stoller
It was before
each Thanksgiving
our class collected buffalo nickels,
their massive bodies pressed flat
in coins edged with grime,
banking them
in mayonnaise jars
built higher with each greasy touch
massing slowly to a total
like a catacomb of bones.
Until one year
our school bought
a real buffalo with huge eyes
empty as the rolling plains.
And when we'd visit his pen
each time there
was less of him--
His woolly mane sloughed off in sheets.
Confinement rubbed his hide raw.
By summer he was gone,
leaving in the
pen's only shade,
round and smooth as a bullet,
a slight indentation--like a pauper's grave
dug, filled and almost forgotten.
The 2River
View, 2_4 (Summer 1998)
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