National Poetry Month: Amy Scattergood

"The Secrecy of Animals"
(Amy Scattergood)


You take the fragments of the world
and put them into boxes, each one
smaller than the last. Lock each one.

It's a kind of violence. The blue
triangles of your mother's dress, or
the birds that flew backwards that morning.

It was an unremarkable day.
Flat weather. Repeating cycles of traffic.
There was nothing to read.

What your husband said had adjectives and nouns.
You can see them from outer space.
Inside that box are cold animals.

Your hands are so far away, as when
the magician separates his assistant
into territories of herself.

No wind. Porcelain stars.
The name on your nametag 
is unrecognizable.


Amy Scattergood's book of poems is The Grammar of Nails. She has a blog called 1000 Bread, 1000 Cattle, an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and went on to train at the California School of Culinary Arts. She also has a masters in religion from the Yale Divinity School. 

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