Look at the Deer

Robert McDonald

you said, and I saw them, dim as ghosts

in the darkening field,

they grazed on tufts of grass that rose

through the snow,

and some stood as still as the grass itself,

while others

bounded away from our headlights

on the narrow

country road. When we came to the curve,

one deer left

the gloaming to leap toward the car. You

banked, and swerved,

stayed on the road but avoided

the horned shadow

that had seemed impossible

to miss.

At the stop sign we exhaled, and

I felt, in my neck,

the knot of our escape, and further,

in my spine, a quick

and passing knowledge of how the forces

of the world might

snap a row of bones. I thought

of the year, all luck

and hard impact. My father, gone, your

father gone, you

flicked the signal, we made the turn

onto Highway

27, north and into the oncoming

night.

ROBERT McDONALD is a queer poet living in Chicago. His work has appeared recently in Emerge, Unbroken, I-70 Review, 2River Review, and West Trade Review, among others.