from which the rest of the deer

was mere corruption. The point

is always to get back

to this: the fine nub skull, chinks of spine

unlocking perfectly

from each other. Any other work

hatchetry, hunger beside it: myself

wincing at the thin

pin bones of the fish

snapping in their silky oils.

I wanted only to tear

one sense of use

out of another. I have seen

so many deer: dozens,

hundreds, but none

more vividly than this one.

The hollow hairs

of its gray-brown muzzle, scraps

of velvet twisting from the antlers—

I’ve filled in the miner’s wife,

her husband, children. Down

to where the garden

could be found, its irises

in flames of white and purple

someone planted, digging

into the cooling ground

so each spring

might be realized again

the effort it takes to make

even the possibility of ourselves

still visible.

Monticello Vase

MONTICELLO VASE

In the Monticello I have never visited,

no two rooms sit at the same height: to walk

here is to be continually off your footing,

each room radiating out from its high

rotunda like a series of thoughts nursed

by strangers: this one with its polygraph

and whalebone walking stick; that

with its rose trellis wallpaper; one room filled

with women’s portraits; another empty,

white, severe. Past the imposing

entryway with its chieftains’ tomahawks

and Revolutionary campaign portraits

lie his private quarters. Here

are cabinets of French faience

and Waterford inkwells, a wine cellar full

of Madeira. In the library, someone’s cropped

the painted mural of moose and mule deer

large enough to stun Buffon

had he seen them: the American animal

being more robust, as the president

once declared, than those shriveled

European creatures stunted from living

on royal grounds. Beside it a map of lands

from the Louisiana Purchase

rich enough to feed the cotton acres

his in-laws cultivated, the map itself

preserved under glass beside some lacework

made by Martha’s house slave,

Critta, with which the estate

could not bear to part. Upstairs,

a red-and-white wedding-ring quilt

on the bed of Polly, his daughter,

who liked to sketch her father’s face

on packets of belles lettres, his blunt head

faded to sepia, as has the thick hair,

once fox-red, in his hallway

Trumbull portrait. His own bedroom

contains only a globe and orrery for ornament,

a formal desk with its swiveling chair

that he invented, a dumbwaiter

installed in one corner, suggesting a mind

both ingenious and practical,

though it was this taste for hidden

spaces, chutes, and secret rooms

that has nearly hollowed out the building’s

foundation. Off the kitchen—small, octagonal,

so warm it feels like entering

the heart—lies the smallest of these rooms.

It contains a single table

on which a glass vase sits. If I looked

closely at it, the faint shapes

of mangled buffalo might appear, ribs

upthrust through piles of flesh etched

into the base ring of the glass. A dozen