In the kitchen, I walked a broad arc
around the wringer washer –
If it catches your hair,
we’ll have to cut it off.
The wood stove sputtered damp birch and sap.
My mother held a snared rabbit
by its back paws, over the yellow pail
while my father, on his knees, cut neat
(that coppery smell on the tongue)
cuffs around the hind limbs, tugging away
the fur like a wet sweater.
That night, undressing me for bed,
my mother pulled my sweater
over my head with that slight claustrophobic
pause when my face was covered by wool.
Skin the bunny, she said.
Carol Hobbs’s collection New-found-land, available through Main Street Rag Press, explores the beauty and risk of that island. Her poems delve into emigration and life as an outsider longing for home and a native returning. In manuscript form, this book was the winner of a New England PEN Discovery Prize. Hobbs’s recent poems look to what remains in the wake of climate crisis and global pandemic. She teaches English and creative writing in Hudson, Massachusetts. Her work appears in many publications including The Antigonish Review, Appalachian Heritage, Cider Press Review, The Fiddlehead, Lily Poetry Review, The Malahat Review, and Pendemics.
