Velvet

But inside her, there is always velvet,

velvet with its give and yield, the kind you

find at a pet store, a bin full of long

ears and noses busy snuffing up nerves

among the cedar chips and their eyes

opening wide as if rabbits couldn't know

what softness brings, as if they'd never know

the smell of something long stored away now

brought into light, and now too her mother

with a camera pointing at her, red

child on the lap of the Easter rabbit,

softness of the body hiding inside

the costume, eyes glinting from the wide holes

in the mask, not a single sobbing breath

of wind down the trail of mesquite and broom

foot-printing the hills of some rancher's land.

The bird dog lifts his ears to the sound

of velvet, the girl listens to the drawn

cries of a crow, her father walks

with the silence of the shotgun, waiting

for the pointer to find scent, the rabbit

at the end of it blinking, its wide eyes

shrinking from the scuffle of their feet like

velvet settling, laid over lines, drying

across the ceiling of an uncle's garage

where they talk inside the smell of salted

skin. At least three dollars for each good pelt

he says, and they scream like children when,

sleeves rolled over his forearms, he brings

the club down on their heads, saving

their feet for cheap key chains, for luck

that softness doesn't seem to have inside

of cages, chicken wire, tubes of water,

and sometimes boys who try kicking the cage

around to see what happens to velvet

tumbling. And, in the after quiet,

she bites the hands reaching toward her, so they

stone her, they open her belly and pull

some things out, open the pink albino

eye and groan at the fluid inside. Then they

bury the carcass without thinking first

of washing their sticky hands in the sink

before eating dinner, before setting

the table, in the still softness of her

beige room, she sits on the carpet picking

at the velveteen of Bunny's stuffed neck,

the rabbit's eyes dull with scratches, eyes left

behind on her bed at night when she stands

in the hall, hearing her father breathe in his room

in the darkness, on the futon, kicking

off the sheets. Awake from a fluid dream

of a woman's eyes staring from behind

a gag, her white skin settling in fat pools

around her, naked, bald. And a man's

voice said, this is your rabbit, so she woke

to this dream inside her, with his teeth wrapped

in her hair, and his hands inside her thighs

where he fingered her coldly. But it has

always been like this—wild, insidious,

and commanding because she gives to it,

fascinated by it and caught by it,

as velvet only listens and is quiet.

Copyright Credit: Gina Franco, "Velvet" from The Keepsake Storm. Copyright © 2004 by Gina Franco. Reprinted by permission of Pima Press.

Source: The Keepsake Storm (University of Arizona Press, 2004)