Charlie Brice writes

Buffalo

On Sundays my mother took me to Frontier Park

where there were three old, worn out, scruffy

and dusty buffalo. I can’t remember

my father ever being there.

Those were calm Sundays.

My father was probably sleeping it off.

Maybe mother hadn’t drunk the night before.

I don’t know.

We’d take a loaf of whole wheat bread.

She’d hold me up to the fence and

I’d feed one of the buffalo a slice.

His old sandpaper tongue

would glide out of his mouth.

He never took his side-eye off me—

even as I fed him. He’d learned

never to trust a white person.

Giants in the Mist -- James Corwin