FINAL POEM FOR THE DEER

Deer asleep on the side of the road. No, deer

dead there as always, preserved in the Book

of Symbols. Deer with its flies and uncanny

arrows in its sides like compass needles, or

fleshless wings. Deer whose hooves puncture names

in the snow. Deer who knows your name.

Deer a white-tailed gnostic in the woods.

Deer you get lost in. Deer with a ribbon

of brass bells around its neck and an iron

sword in its antlers’ altar. Deer emperor

surveying a funeral from afar, hoofing open

cracks in the vagaries of the fool

who wanted a dear. Deer in the mind taking

place of the dear, always its assignment. Here,

the casket carrying the father is a deer,

four cloven hooves upon the red carpet, a blown-up

photograph of the father’s past face a road

sign saying “The future is still.”

Boy who refuses to view his body’s father.

Afraid of the face he will not recognize,

for addiction has its way with flesh. Deer

casket marching out the church to where

the earth is gentler to flesh, strips it patiently.

Deer carrying the dead in its spine cradle.

The scent of pears beckons from the basinet

of bone. The dead carrying the dead. The arrows

in the deer tremble toward their cardinal affairs:

the skin someone forgot the feel of, the mama

who never said goodbye, the daddy whose belly

rolled on its side like a truck-crushed deer.

There is no daddy here. The father sits up

in his casket, startled, his funeral full

of his sons, no, his one son repeating

like a paper cutout. A forest of sons

in which the deer tilts its decorous head

into the father’s grave and sips.

Final Poem as Nocturne into Aubade, or Sonrise

FINAL POEM AS NOCTURNE INTO AUBADE, OR SONRISE

I do not find Osun in somebody’s son I sonned

while his gold fronts flashed a summer dress

in the back of me bucking to be

ridden by his tongue like his Virginian drawl

was first to get down my draws like that like that.

Not everything masculine is mine, but I make him

mine for modernity. Sixty-watt bulb spun

mosaic by ceiling fan and

this bed creaks like a church pew and

it was Sunday when he came so he my Sunday Man,

though I prefer Thursday Man’s selflessness:

before returning to his lover, he balances sunlight

on his tongue tip. He parts my legs to gift.

My hairiest part yawns like a waking bear.

Final Poem for the Biography of a Black Man as Animal and His Enforced Embrace of a Human Praxis