Two halters of rope around your neck, and two bodies jammed hard
against your sides, is all it takes to hold you while he slips his blade
beneath your eye. You hear the wet slide and suck as he scoops
the eye out. He does the other, they roll together in the dirt.

Does it matter that he groans as if in pleasure? As he explodes them
to pulp with his booted foot. That his face is fixed in a parody of delight
and sprayed with gore? That his eyes are haloed? That in their wholeness
they reflect the emptied pits of yours? Can you hear the others? Go at it!

One whacks your jaw with a boar tusk till it cracks.
You drool blood into the dirt. Another takes your tail in his two fists,
and snaps it. The first drags a long-knife through your jugular and kicks
your chin back. Your neck’s grin widens.

Does it matter that the last thing you know is the scent of the herd,
not far from here; and the scent of cactus blossoms and sweet-grass?

© Dimitra Harvey

‘Sport’ first appeared in Southerly Journal, Volume 71, Number 3, A Nest of Bunyips, May 2012; and can also be found in Long Glances: A snapshot of new Australian poetry from the 2013 Jean Cecily Drake-Brockman Poetry Prize, Manning Clark House: Canberra, 2013.

© poemanddish