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Issues » Animals Among Us » Section 1: Becomings » Andi Boyd

Section 1: Becomings

Andi Boyd

 
Andi Boyd
 
Yellow
 
The [bison calf] was abandoned and causing a dangerous situation—NPR, May 2016
 
yellow is the color of birth, of teeth that have been many years in use. Of saliva. Saliva bitten into a lemon is chartruse upon another tongue—buttercup. The color of madness is yellow in the mouth also. The calf that was picked up (an attempted act of love) was caught in the marigold, braying. Begging, for help, the criminals said. Yellow is the shade of not knowing yet to be modest, silent. Peach fuzz (your mother calls it) on a young girl’s legs, romping careless in the corn fields. Stalks lashing at eyelids, thinking of the gummy velvet of biting toward the pit. Wanting to be bitten into like this (losing innocence) The touch was the problem, authorities said. The canary flesh scenting the golden ends of the calf’s fur. This poisoned it. Made it—solitary. Licking sweat from atop the lip (yours) (another’s) in the brambles of bushes grown blush with yellow: honeysuckle hunting edges youth into great effort for barely a drop, teaches that an act is greater than reward— Having been refused by its herd, the calf was continually approaching people and cars. The calf was euthanized. Yellow, the stars in the Southern hemisphere. Yellow the fading edges of paper that unite two together; yellow (ing) the ones that rip apart. Yellow the taste of trying, of the glint in the dark, round eye. Yellow stones sweeping under, yellow sulfur rising with fervor from undercover, yellow eyes, yellow love, yellow fingernails, songs yellow, voice yellow, fangs also. Yellow is the color of the venom inserted into the vein to stop the reckless abandoned, living dangerously.
 
Andi Boyd is a current resident of San Antonio, Texas. She grew up in South Louisiana with a respite of time lived in Montana and (later) Spain. She received her MFA from Texas State University, and her BA in English from Northwestern State University. She writes and publishes in both poetry and flash fiction, and her work has been previously published in Gulf Coast, Pembroke, Narrative Magazine, Deep South Magazine, deComp, and Gone Lawn.
 

 

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