Winner: You Were Found in the Belly of a Deer Once
Abraded, but clean. Someone cut you out, your face
purple, as if a panic of blood rioted there. You wanted
to hide. I know you did. The world, so painful.
You came upon the deer and crawled into the startle
of its mouth. You couldn’t have known years
would pass and you would long the leather
of the deer’s stomach lining. The bones stripped
to paper by winter. The deer couldn’t rise with the weight
of you. Two heartbeats to carry across rivers,
through the glen. Neither one of you could stay there
and live. Now, you are a grown man. Your wife has left
you. You crawled out of your life through an aperture
in time, wanting to go back to that dark place
where no one could touch you, where the dark
calls like a bottle you uncork so you can crawl inside.
The glass river you follow to find yourself, frantic. Even
in winter, water waits for someone to drown.
Yesterday, you crawled out of the bottle and back
to your life. Your kids stood at the door as you wandered
into the yard at daybreak. A bird, bulleting
through the air, had struck you. Against the door
of your heart, it exploded in fear. You haven’t wanted to live
since we were little, though, have you? Little wind. Sullen
with morning. At your wedding, I held your daughter
under a sycamore tree. Then, I went away. For years,
I went away, while you sparrowed in the deer’s shadow.
What is the difference between tenses? Before. After.
At night, still you visit the deer. Its carcass, laid
to waste in the woods, blades of your blonde hair
sticking up through its bones. Come back, you’d said
when first I left. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t see
you without the sadness of the deer’s dead eyes. Now,
I stand on your shadow to keep you alive. Your bones,
caulked with whiskey and the circus wind. I would like
to tell you that there was never a deer. That you were found
in your room, the lights off after our father died.
But you need to live in the belly of something
warm, without light. Come back, I say to the wind
that tethers the body to the lie. But there is no reply.
All I see are the eyes of the deer. Eyes that need
closing. The broken river that lies in wait.
CITATION FROM SOUVANKHAM THAMMAVONGSA
Every line in this poem startles, "bulleting/through the air." The voice brims and moves with power. It reminds us "we all need to live in the belly of something."
