Deer Ode, Tangled & Horned
Marcus Wicker
Always the sun first
then the doe sunning, the stag
running toward the doe, wherein
this ramshackle causality
a taste for flesh buds
at birth – when mouth clasps
to breast – quieting
the gut’s ache, not hunger
for touch. If you don’t believe
touch is a famine
fed by need, in another
scene, see an orphaned fawn
bow before a block of salt
crowned on the lone stump
in a clearing where sudden
wind has instructed him
in a lick’s dripping scent.
Right. Now, who then
betrays his permanence
but the huntsmen –
himself? Who then but palette –
appetite’s kissing cousin, driven
only by science of nature –
O Desire, you mother –
You Adam
of the valley, crouched
with a catcher’s mitt
always signaling for the quince
to roll downhill. You’re not much
of a nurturer from behind
this rifle scope,
especially on nights when
I am Lot’s hermaphrodite wife –
all pillar
& looking back
on my downfall from the future
which is surely paradise
or purgatory, depending
on how I decipher my scripture, O
Desire, if you’re a Catholic’s
Tree of Life I must be Buddhist –
free. I’m not interested
in you for the progeny
so much as your skyscraping –
your telephone poles – miraculous,
glazed, glistening with December’s
beckoning slick – crisscrossed
with tiny horizontal beams, wired –
horizon & morning dew,
forming, Dear Sire,
your anointing – this
intimately connected rosary
I can’t help but prick
my tongue to.
About this poem
“Originally, ‘Dear Ode, Tangled & Horned’ was ‘Saltlick Ode,’ a failed poem I began at Cave Canem seven years ago. Hanging in my parents’ backyard this summer, I saw the scene depicted in stanza one, three days before realizing what I was really writing about back then.” – Marcus Wicker
About Marcus Wicker
Marcus Wicker is the author of “Maybe the Saddest Thing” (Harper Perennial, 2012). He is an assistant professor of English at the University of Southern Indiana and lives in Evansville, Ind.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2015 Marcus Wicker. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
