A private collector requested
endangered skin be stitched to a chair
by the best hands in France.

My nieces and I
agree it’s not nice or pretty.

The hartebeest, with humble tastes
and a name too carnal and Germanic
for its Savannah stripes.

The chair has been intercepted
by the museum, but no one
confiscates his desire.

Strangers ask my sister what she is,
where from, out in Boston. In New York
she answered model calls but was
sent back too blond or too “ethnic.”

American alligator skin. Nile crocodile,
Canadian moose throne. I wonder
what a man thinks between the horns.

Sarah learns how to draw each animal,
following circles in a menagerie book.

Such a man cuts the dark eyes
out of birch trees, wears knives
precise to history as if to recreate it.

My hand on the defiant
dandelions of Hannah’s head.
She always calls for the opposite of our plans.
Sarah finds another interest, a model heart.

This chair lived in a dark room, pierced
with heads, velvet brown after a hemorrhage.
Glass eyes conducting internal examinations.

Hannah wanders to the taxidermy lioness
frozen in a roar. Sisters in golden coats.
Look into her mouth, girls. Listen.