“Slowly”

“…the rabbit stiff, nose in, bits of litter stuck to its fur / its head clenched in the side / jaws of the snake, the snake / sucking it down its long throat” (Masini 3-6). After reading this quote from Donna Masini’s poem “Slowly” it brought chills to my entire body. This poem was so disturbing, confusing and completely bothering to me because of all the details that she gives. Maybe also because my BIGGEST phobia is snakes and this poem is about a snake eating a rabbit.

This poem was quite confusing to me; I couldn’t really fill in the puzzle pieces and understand it too well. What I did understand and get from the first read of this poem was that the author is talking about how she remembers going on a field trip to the zoo with her class and watching a rabbit being devoured by a snake. She gives every detail to how the rabbit is being eaten by the snake, “I didn’t know why / the snake didn’t choke, the rabbit never / moved, how the jaws kept opening / wider, sucking it down...” (19-22).

The fact that in the poem she states how her teacher told her and the rest of the girls to move along, to view another animal but couldn’t because they were mesmerized from what they were seeing. “(all the girls, groaning, shrieking / but weren’t we amazed, fascinated, / saying we couldn’t look, but looking weren’t we / imagining – what were we imagining?). / Mrs. Peterson urged us to move on girls, but we couldn’t move” (11-17). This is where questions started boiling in my head. Why was the author thinking they were imagining it? Why was she asking what they were imagining if they were not imagining it. The girls were there in person, watching the snake eat the rabbit. Did the author maybe ask this because they were so fascinated at the most disturbing and gross action ever that they could have been imaging something else to keep them interested in watching? As if they had set their minds to imagine something other than that to stay and look and watch it continue swallowing it. Also, what caught my attention was how the author italicized “move on girls”. Was she mimicking her teacher, Mrs. Peterson? Reading that line again, maybe the author was mimicking her. But what really threw me over board with confusion and I did not understand was the last couple of lines in her poem, “..just so / I am taking this in, slowly, / taking it into my body: / this grief. How slow / the body is to realize. / You are never coming back” (22-27). Why is she saying “I,” referring to her? Why did she say taking it in her body when it is the snake that is. How she goes from the snake to her, then to her being the snake? So many questions to what I didn’t understand the first time I read this poem.

Now looking back at this poem and analyzing it better, the author is realizing how slow it is to know one day one is never coming back. From rereading it several times, I took and I think someone close to the author, a family member or even a friend of hers may have passed away and she is saying it is hard to take it in, to take in that that person is never coming back. One slowly takes it in, taking the pain and grief into their mind, heart and body that they are gone. By grief I mean to know that person is in a better place but yet not wanting to believe, slowly taking it in that it is a bye. Using the snake eating the rabbit as a perfect example but yet very disturbing of how slow it is to take in a situation like that.