Megaloceros
big brute clubmoss god. dark echo
of roamable loam & leaf-fat trees.
looming ungulate, polished
& moonstone old, i linger
at your dais, awed as any
small-called thing. you:
wide warden
in a skinfilled room,
unseeingly keen, each antler
an open hand of bone. you sock
the brass out of me, & the two
gasping quebecois standing nearby,
the sticky-fisted child
gathering grapestems in his jeans.
we wait—little bugs on a sill—
for permission to look away, to
murmur over any of the other
pickled and polished things
posed in this room, but you grant
nothing. Watch Me Until I Become
Sublime, Dusk & Shining, you
do not say, but i hear, somehow,
over my rowdy blood, my
clobbering heart, over all this
wet business. something about
death’s dry science. something
about pop zoologists wagering
your crown your undoing:
ice grayed the grass faster
than you could find it
& so your greedy horns
drank you dry. it’s not true,
probably. i’ll die too,
probably. will the world outpace
my feeding? i won’t lie—
i’d like to be looked-at, after.
some unfamiliar animal
at my knees, awed by an
omnivorous bigness.
Copyright © 2025 by J. Bailey Hutchinson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 2, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This poem started in a staredown with the Irish elk display at Dublin’s Natural History Museum [National Museum of Ireland]. It was once believed the giant quadruped went extinct because its antlers—spanning up to fourteen feet, tip-to-tip, some say—inhibited their ability to eat enough to sustain their massive bodies. It’s unlikely that’s true, but I got to wondering about appetite—for food, longevity, stories. We probably like to think we’ve documented our history well enough to disinvite speculation, but I’m not so sure. Perhaps one day our skeletons, which seem so frail compared to the Megaloceros, will read [as] surreal.”
—J. Bailey Hutchinson
J. Bailey Hutchinson
