Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she grew up without electricity or running water. Her debut poetry collection, Northerny, came out from University of Alberta Press in 2024. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Arc Poetry, CV2, DUSIE, Freefall, and Okay Donkey.
“‘Animal Snap’ is a sequence of oracular pronouncements based on the illustrated cards in the card deck sold by House of Marbles. My husband gave me this for a stocking stuffer a couple of years ago. He works in IT and I have a degree in applied math, but we’re both terrible at understanding how to play games. The cards are quite sweet, and I’ve carried them around as a bit of a talisman. Thinking of it more as a set of art cards, or a tarot deck, I started to wonder what these animal figures might have to say.”
“‘Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths Complete Edition‘ refers to the 1993 Penguin version of this book. He makes a statement about the significance of snakes in mythology that has resonance for me as I’m writing through my father’s death. The poem takes his words as a starting point.”
Matching the KINGFISHER means your words
will have effects. You should be careful
what you say, but also cautious
of presuming to control this power.
Every nut is the same nut and any two nuts
may be transposed at will within a Hilbert
space. The appearance of the SQUIRREL
therefore signifies a profusion of small
troubles, all interchangeable, such that the solution
to your sciatica may be found
in your stuck sock drawer.
The MOUSE indicates underestimation of the influence
of heredity. As a model organism,
the mouse serves as a reminder
that genetic experimentation underlies
contemporary communication networks.
Attend to protocols. Be like Mouse B.
To receive a FOX is to forget your secrets.
The fox who recites his secrets does so
in the tone of one who recalls his dream in a dream.
Foxes are good sleepers, and you could be too. An
auspicious indication. Pat your pockets
regularly looking for forgotten twenty-dollar bills.
The BADGER is the wild card. Whatever
thought was in your head just now
you are stuck with it. Sorry about that.
The FROG signifies adaptability, yet also
extreme vulnerability to minuscule
variations in prevailing conditions.
Most frogs are dead. The frog is symbolic
of regeneration. Pride emerges
from a formless mud. Try not to die today.
Don’t look at the OWL. If you see the owl
turn your head. You love the owl. Just listen.
At the garden pond
feather floats on still water
DUCK sleeps with wet feet.
Graves says the Greeks say snakes are the dead
incarnate. Snakes I’ve seen are dead
by the road, or live in captivity. Dead
snakes live in myth and memory, told by the dead.
Snakes represent so many things one starts to wonder if what they represent is
representation. The snake as an indefinite chain of and and and and and and and and and
and and. The snake swallows the live mouse, or we wiggle the froze-and-thawed mouse
with the tongs to simulate living to trigger the snake’s appetitive reflex. The snake makes
it all snake, makes of the wiggle its undulation.
I sat in the ICU with my father who was dead but breathing and heard the doctor through
the curtain calling to the woman in the next bed: “Irene! Wiggle your toes! Irene! Wiggle
wiggle! Irene! Wiggle wiggle!” The snakes—obviously anything tubular, hissing or
sinuous can be a snake. The wiggle is the snake. The toes are back from the dead. The
dead live in captivity. The snakes are in Graves.
Graves says the Greeks say the snakes are the dead
incarnate. The dead I’ve seen are dead
on the sidewalk, or live in dreams. Dead
men lie down and do not turn toward the worm, or so the dead
would tell.
