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Where Animals Dream
Madeline Izzo

Go down to that place, that warm feral place
where cubs mewl and squall and suck
the place of darkness and restless sleep

This, yes this

A place of tooth and claw
and hot moist breath
We are wild again, you and I

It is a kindness I do for you
this conjuring of place
this prick of ancient memory
where nothing else exists
but smell and taste and touch
curl of mother’s tongue
around a muzzle
the wet of her lick

Protector mother
anger unaroused
the rumble yet within her

This, yes this

Delve deep into the labyrinth
the thick rich chords of sleep
the laryngeal utterance
of need and thirst,
of hunger and yearning and fang

This, you ask
I know this place

It is not yet unfamiliar
There is resemblance
to a time before
when the heart of the mother
beat against my ear
when you and I were I and I
We spoke in grunts
and simple touch
This place on the edge
of awakening
where mother melds into child
and child has not separated yet
One beat, one caress, a single
long unpunctuated breath

This is the place I give to you
The den where animals dream
and unnamed creatures linger
before knowing, before language,
before abstinence and treason

We are cubs again
you and I, and I and I
suckling at the breast
of the mother
protectress, enchantress, divider

This is the place I offer you
Take it and remember.

—
Madeline Izzo lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she runs a small flower farm with her daughter and helps out doing odd jobs at a local flower shop. Her poems have appeared in Trajectory, Coneflower Café, Pudding Magazine, Mostly Maine, and Groundstar, her short fiction in the Licking River Review and Dream Weaver, and her nonfiction articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Shady Ave.

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