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. 





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