Ringstraked

The morning Jacob called us to the field

and said he would take us back

to the land of his father, Isaac—

the one led up the mountain by his father

to be bound and knifed and burnt for love

of the god of his fathers, I thought,

I will not.

I would stay, I would put away the knife

I’d kept after that first night.

Small at first, twisted flick of the tip

around the white crescent scars

Rachel’s fingernails left on my forearms

when we were girls. Then deeper

lines inside my thighs, the parts

he used against me.

We would go, he said, then he knelt

and started on the green poplar rods. He scored

and ringed and nicked them till the white

shone through, freckled and blotched,

then he laid them in the gutters of the troughs

—he believes with this he makes the cattle

bear young of the same mottled stripe.

This wage I have settled with your father, Leah,

he said to me aside. Those born solid

stay with him. The speckled and spotted

and ringstraked are mine.