The Rutting

Poetry by Caitlin Scarano

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Caitlin Scarano is a poet in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee PhD creative writing program. Her recent work can be found in Crazyhorse, Chattahoochee Review, Word Riot, and Five Quarterly. Her first chapbook, The White Dog Year, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press (2015).

This summer, my boyfriend and his younger brother and I drove through Yellowstone National Park. It was my first time in the park. Halfway through the drive, we entered an open valley full of golden grass and slanted afternoon light. Cars were backed up as far as I could see, because a herd of at least one hundred bison were crossing the road. We were literally in the middle of their mating season. It was an intense experience – the air hummed with energy. A few weeks later, my boyfriend suggested I write a poem about the experience. I expected this poem to be a quiet mediation on a positive experience with nature, but what I wrote was much more visceral. I found myself fascinated by the masculinity, or spectacle of masculinity, outside our car that day (us: the intruders, the voyeurs). A reflection, I realized, of the developing, inevitable masculinity of the men with me.

—Yellowstone, August 2014

A herd of bison surrounded our car.

I stopped, gripping the wheel

like a weapon. The brute masculinity

of them. Green cud hanging

from their moan-shaped

mouths. Slaver, penis shafts. All

around us a pulsing. A baying.

Engorged belligerence. Males

jockeying for position

behind a chosen female. A line

of cars – galvanized. His head

minotaurish yet vaguely human.

I could imagine his face below

my torso, his massive skull

between my legs. Horn and thigh,

cream and stone. The sharpness

of feet. His half bearded body.

My boyfriend and his brother

in the car with me, rapt, growing

as men, taking up more

and more space. Muscular.

Blatant. Bent on.