Elizabeth Kuelbs

De-Extinction

After the 30,000-year-old artworks in Chauvet Cave, located on the Ardèche River in southern France.

Calcite concretions
glitter in your headlamp.
Tunnel-mudded,
you descend
the void’s lip,
down into the scent
of the earth.
Stalactites
dazzle
in your light,
cave bear skulls
grin on the floor.
On the walls,
their claw marks.
On the walls, in this world,
another world—red ocher,
charcoal, the ancient undulation
of stone and brush and hand
summon thundering aurochs, the coiled prowl
of cave lions, the thrust and stab of woolly rhino
horns. They surround your sputtering torch.
You scrape its tip on rock to spark fresh flame. Ibexes
leap toward you, open-mouthed horses toss their manes,
whinnying. Water ticks into a grotto where mammoths drink.
Your eardrums pulse before their hosts. Your blood
forests. Your blood rivers. In the flicker, you are tusk and hoof,
haunch and maw, roar and lick, a bison-embraced Venus. You are
dream, you are hunt, you are smoke. The infinite red handprints
of your people.

Elizabeth Kuelbs writes at the edge of a Los Angeles canyon. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Scientific American, Lily Poetry Review, Rust & Moth, Bear Review, Literary Mama, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and her chapbooks include Little Victory and How to Clean Your Eyes.