The Lumberjack's Dove

A Poem

GennaRose Nethercott

In the ingenious and vividly imagined narrative poem The Lumberjack's Dove, GennaRose Nethercott describes a woodsman who cuts off his hand with an axe—however, instead of merely being severed, the hand shapeshifts into a dove. Far from representing just an event of pain and loss in the body, this incident spirals outward to explore countless facets of being human, prompting profound reflections on sacrifice and longing, time and memory, and—finally—the act of storytelling itself. The lumberjack, his hand, and the axe that separated the two all become participants in the story, with unique perspectives to share and lessons to impart. "I taught your fathers how to love," Axe says to the acorns and leaves around her. "I mean to be felled, sliced to lumber, & reassembled into a new body."

Inflected with the uncanny enchantment of modern folklore and animated by the sly shifting of points of view, The Lumberjack's Dove is wise, richly textured poetry from a boundlessly creative new voice.

Part I

It’s the same old story:

A lumberjack loses a hand to his own axe. The hand becomes a dove. The hand tries to fly away but the lumberjack catches it beneath his shoe. You know this story. The lumberjack ties one end of a string to the hand & the other end to his belt. Then the lumberjack walks out of the forest, the airborne hand fluttering along behind.

There are three rules of storytelling:

1. Only tell a story if you have to. If you can survive without telling it, keep mum.

2. A story is a two-way mirror. Don’t think the characters cannot see you. It’s safest to assume they can always see you, & they know exactly where you live.

3. The purest way to speak truth is by lying.

Slow it down. This is how a hand morphs as it abandons the limb. First, carpal bones lose their weight. Fingers hollow into piccolos. Next, lumbricales twist & re-form. The ulnar nerve & radial artery elongate through the bottom of the wrist, elbow bend & harden, grow talons. The thumb sheds from flesh to bone, bone to beak. Carves into point & split. Feathers bristle up from skin; an afterthought. Now for the hard part.

Now for the hard part. Flight, o wild ghost, anti-burial. Tendons weave into fans. Delicate, so easy to tangle. Uncurl from the palm into wings, all wet & spooked by newness.

Watch them discover their strength, accordioning until the new body, severed from the old body, lifts itself into the air & flies towards a nearby branch.

Lumberjack clutches the absent space at the end of his arm. He looks up at the dove, who in turn, looks back at him, already forgetting it was ever anything but sovereign.

Stories are best in threes—Lumberjack: The abandoned. Hand: The abandoner. Axe: Means of abandonment. No matter who you are, all you are ever doing is leaving or being left or acting as the impetus to leave.

Again, & again, & again.

This is every story.

This is the trinity.

It’s a betrayal, really. A man is born with this body. Everyone tells him it’s his. They call it by his name. They pet this body & clothe this body & teach him that this body, it’s with him forever.

A Portrait: Arms twinned in blue flannel, rolled to the elbow. Blue veins like garter snakes. Freckles dusting the collarbone & nose & throat. Pink scar check-marked on the upper lip from a BB gun misfire. Rag in the back pocket. A firm sense of direction. A restlessness.

Lumberjack starts his pickup truck. He keeps the windows closed as he drives & the dove floats up to bounce against the glass. The road is slick with rain. Worms boil up from the earth. Now there is a shirt tied around the wound, the fabric growing sticky & dark with ache. A bootlace becomes a tourniquet. A terrible yank settles in the basement of his heart, the lowest stair.

Some men have a gift for controlling which way a tree will fall. They spit snuff into undergrowth to interpret like tea leaves. They light brushfires just to speak to the smoke. When a trunk drops, it could almost be mistaken for bowing.

When Axe & Lumberjack touch, whole forests die for them.

Axe has loved often & by “loved,” I mean she has cleaved many pieces off many bodies.

Lumberjack drives towards the witch doctor or he drives to the E.R. depending on who’s telling the story, & depending on if the storytelle...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Publisher’s Note
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part V
• Part VI
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher