Deer

On Sundays I am alone.
The thick grey cat, huge,
obscenely beautiful,
sits as a centerpiece
for an empty table.
Her eyes are lime
and define the landscape
of her wild body.
Wing-tips chartreuse, gold,
a parrot glows
before the rains.

Always mystery
is without description,
the description itself
a defilement,
and so is merciless
and cruel
as a God might be
on a winter Sunday morning.

I want to empty everything
to lie in emptiness
in a cold empty room –
Purity & cleanliness,
white ribs
beneath pale skin –
my veins are tendrils
unfurling to an empty heart.

A phone was silenced on my hip
but kept there just in case
a child fell and bruised her lip,
from Mother’s mouth to her face –

an airy kiss displaced.

Dishes, clothing, countertops
Jamilla on repeat,
the phone relays a message:
a photograph, somehow already
an old story of power and defeat:

a boy, his gun,
and his draining deer,
eyes undone
from the lock of life
by Daddy,
giving to his son
a scope to steady shaking fear,
love, now, the uncocked click
and its release.
Make it clean and neat,
ignore her stumbling feet.

I do not know this child
but the deer I do
I wish he were something wild
and death could find him too.

I did not erase
the photograph.
That sly smile
obliterates
that baby face.

A mixed up fucked up number
a child misdialed in glee:
“Look what I did friends,
track, listen, see..
finger on the trigger…”

No.
I do not know him.
Though on this Sunday
alone and clean and bare,
his kill
is my prayer.