Flora Thomas Pens “Killing the Rabbit”

Amber Flora Thomas’s essay, “Killing the Rabbit,” was published in Orion Magazine.

In the piece, Flora Thomas writes, “Over the decades, as though possessed, I continued to write poems about killing the rabbits. I saw the universe in the eye of a dismembered rabbit’s head in gut pile. A few times I wrote from the point of view of the killer who took on God-like blame in doing what we all needed him to do, which was hard, but necessary work. I kept rewriting the poem, once as a mother leaning over a pot and stewing the meat to feed my family.”

Orion has become a focal point in an extraordinarily rich period of nature writing and has remained true to that core conviction. However, the magazine has evolved into a bimonthly publication, and the range of its interests has broadened to include environmental and cultural concerns.