Topsy
 
Elephant electrocuted at Coney Island, NY
4 January 1903, 2:45 p.m.
 
No matter the years without mercy,
brash men with their bullhooks,
a pitchfork perforating the gorgeous curve
of jaw that mirrored your absent tusk
line, sand in your eyes from children
delirious with cotton candy
and their brief autonomy, your trunk tip
singed by a drunken handler’s cigarette.
 
No matter the years of chain chafe, train jostle,
and the raucous cries of ticket holders
hell-bent on getting their money’s worth.
 
It all came down to that ten-second
intermission between breath and
stillness—too brief for human ecstasy,
too long for lightning to sear
your body’s wet pathways--
6,600 volts carried nine blocks
from Edison’s substation
into Luna Park where you’d refused
the bribe of apples meant to charm you
across the timber bridge to that spot
beneath the rising electric tower
where spectators shuffled
from foot to foot to keep warm
through the hours-long waiting.
 
No matter your immovable frame.
They simply rerouted death
to meet you, cables coaxed
twelve extra yards to where you’d halted,
carrots laced with cyanide
unable to tamp the mounting panic
as harsh men strove to tether you.
 
And though the grainy film stutters
in shades of ash and charcoal,
who can fail to see the citrine sparks
burst like infernal blossoms
from the copper fittings
you’d tried to shake from the great spades
of your feet, pale smoke snaking
the coarse columns of stiffened legs,
your spine’s jittery arc,
fingering the clotted-cream sky--
a few more wrinkles in the hem
of a gathering midseason storm.
 

Topsy on the day of her execution