Freeing Wheel

Papa told her many times,
Auf dieser Rad, tritst nicht.
--Don't step on the wagon wheel, dummy,
Her brother would shout
So she understood not the danger
But her own stupidity,
That monstrous giant,
His boots green with manure,
Nails outlined in black,
Head hivelike with schemes.
Rising in the filthy dark
To milk the livestock,
Pitch hay with scrawny arms
Beside her mother,
Scrub clothes at daybreak,
Riding the ferry home from school,
 From the softness of the teacher
Who taught her to peel an apple
All in one strip,
Pinned beneath the smelly neighbor
To whom her brother sold her
Once or twice a week,
She thought of stillness,
How the sky, the birds, might look
 From the safe side of a window.
She thinks of it now,
Held down on the kitchen table,
Her leg made pulp by the freeing wheel,
Distant from her own screams,
 From the rage between her teeth,
The doctor's white shirt
Starry with her blood,
She thinks of it now,
How fine a bargain she made.