Deer Poem
by Miriam J. Anastasi
I.
honestly my own feelings
exhaust me but my aesthetic is
absolutely where i want
it to be right now ... brown & black
w/ green eyes in autumn foliage
I can appreciate myself as part of a palette & i remember i possess this vessel with
grace, actually, the
cool breeze & gathering clouds & the new Big Thief single undoing the summer
of packs of
sweating men shouting at me from their pick-up trucks if i could have a
scaffolding of life
rather than one of avoidance if i could have a break from performance dig down
into my own
warm geosin-rich soil to wrap my palm around those deep sunken structures—
what would i find there? what could i see?
what creature lies at the bottom of the pit of indulgence
its claws scraping across the walls of my wings,
my shoulders
I hold a bird in my
palm for you I hold
I hold a warm crow
in my palm its
Corvidian intelligence spent emulating my (its mothers)
speech I am a many-titted deer creature with
unshorn antlers the mark
of my first sex held
high & sharp atop my head no scrutiny or impulse
to clip them for I am proud to have so visible a pain with which
I protect my brood
& my own hunger spinning inside
of me sustains itself on
the dew off the mountains &
the sweat of the forest
fungus hangs freely on my
back an ornament of
cyclical mourning a haze
of rot hot across my eyes
Give me the cool dying orange
of autumn
Give me a handful of
ceylon & a loud room full
of trans dykes & a breeze to cut my
teeth on
Let me hear the mountain practicing its tinny head-voice or watch the river nick itself
shaving
I want a silver maple to crack my back and get rid of these tension headaches
Moon mother holy ghost-witness to centuries of untold lovers, if we merely exist
in the eyes
of others please lend your sight for me to see myself by
In pursuit of the mundane I find truth
II.
My mind is endless my body is endless
I thirst for nothing I hunger for nothing
I saturate myself with the scent of the newness
I welcome myself to the scent of the new
I saturate myself in the love of becoming
I welcome myself to the hymns of the river
I find a holy place inside my body and at first the altar refuses me;
I find a holy place inside my body and I am rejected from the empty temple, massive
doors barred with
thorns and brambles;
The holy place I find inside my body holds high walls sharp and unscalable gnawing
tempestuous;
I find a holy place inside my body and I sink down into its sewer-moat in search of
hidden entryways
through the many catacombs my atlas has led me to believe reside beneath: I
dive and grope
and sputter along its submerged walls but all the stone I find is undoored
and smooth;
I hoist myself from the holy muck of this forgotten place inside my body and lay myself bare
on its
gleaming marble stairwell: the fetid river clings to my skin now, and it is only in
this glorious
putrescence that I am at last welcomed;
I find a holy place inside my body and its many barricades catch fire and come crashing
down, no voice
booming not to fear;
I find a holy place inside my body and my footsteps echo sharply within its massive
vestibule along
pillars of patterned goldwork and statues of long-past cephalophores, stone lips
silent
on stone heads in hands;
I find a holy place inside my body and I lay out the altar: an obsidian gargoyle bookend
statue from the
antique shop in Uptown, found without her mate:
crystal blue sea glass long-rounded on the granite beaches of New Hampshire:
the chunk of sun-bleached deer vertebrae Hannah found after catching her foot
in the ribcage
in the woods behind her house on my birthday:
granddad’s old tobacco pipe, still ash-musked:
a dried bundle of purple amaranth, a crop suited for the warm times to come:
smoothed pebbles of fired, air-pocked clay washed up on the beaches at Rokeby
from the
brickyard across the river:
hair shed from the last pettings of Claire’s big old red retriever, Hope, now at rest
but whose
soft smell and quiet panting still walks with me in my most silent troubled
evenings;
I find a holy place inside my body and I fill its dry fountain bucket by bucket from the
starshine
trickling in the ceiling and in its red-empty waters I bathe, finding quiet solace and
fruitful
solitude;
I find a holy place inside my body and I ward the door with the smell of charcoal and my
mother’s
threadbare cardigan, for an unprotected silence is waiting to erupt again;
I find a holy place inside my body and I hang tapestries upon its smooth red walls
depicting each of my
lovers, for each one I knew and know myself by;
The sounds of my prayers echo through the high atrium of my holy body, quaking in
crimson light
with the humble weight of recognition;
I find a holy place inside my body and I light a candle which places the shadow of Hope
in my lap;
I find a quiet place in the crystalline throngs of memory sprouting from the parapets, their
glow is blue
and cold and this time at last I feel no fear;
I find a holy place in my body and it is lying in the Maryland ryegrass with my bike beside
me
stretching out my twisting hips to let the demons eke out between the seams,
blue wind, black
walnut, mourning dove;
I find a holy place inside my body and I am down at the silt-flecked river again plucking
nylon strings,
singing the same song, my grief now warm and quite becoming;
I find a holy place & it is me 12 or 14 kissing a boy on the cheek on his couch not
because I am
attracted to him exactly but because he is the only boy who is kind to me and
sometimes he
puts his hand on my head and I feel a visceral forbidden wretched kind of pretty
and I have
the sense that if I kiss him it will finally turn me into a girl;
I find a holy place inside the feedbacking bass harmonic that says we miss you, please
come home;
In a dream Felix jumps into my car with shoplifted snacks from Whole Foods and we are
driving to
Philly to see Loone again;
I lose myself in the susurrus of countless holy places;
I find a holy continent of song surfacing from the water that has always been there & I
knew its
location from the start;
I find a holy place in my body & it is smoking in the rain beneath the awe of streetlamp
and red
awning with my best friend when the threat of my blood clotting still felt utterly
fictional;
I find a holy place inside my body & it is after giving the platonic head which broke that
long expanse
of panicked untouchability & hearing on the fogged walk home Jay Som’s I Think
You’re
Alright and wanting desperately to be in love;
I find a holy place & it is the great violet river of radiance sludging forward and around
and out from
the amp connected to the pretty tall girl whose high bun and owl-shaped face I
catch only a
fragment of through the crowd: the river still flowing, now, years after, down the
rocky
cliffside into the river, leaving a torrent of gay worms in its wake; much later this
girl lends me
her distortion pedal and the exponential heat held in the footswitch is the highest
pendent in
the crystalline chain;
I find a holy place and it is hiding inside the blue spruce of my body around the corner
from the deli
reading The Left Hand of Darkness on my lunch break: I find a hagiography of Ian in
there
bound in gold and sprouted garlic, may his Scandinavian orchestral pianist
girlfriend
bring them both unimaginable wealth and prosperity;
I uncover hundreds of holy artifacts plumbing the crystalline depths & do not have space
in my
messenger bag to hold them & so I move on.