A Woman Witnesses Velvet Shedding
In the woods behind her house,
half a mile from the Savannah River,
she hears the bellow of a buck. Googling
white-tail deer, this woman learns it is rut season.
She takes a deep dive into the world of deer
hormones and is startled by the pairing
of two words— shedding and velvet. Life
is a series of odd pairings; paradox has
hardened her some. She then reads when
the buck’s antlers stop growing, losing
blood flow, their velvet covering peels
off. A velvet shedding madness happens
but a hundred yards from her bed, its own
paradox happening nightly. Could her
itch yield new antlers too? She too a complex
trophy as mating ensues under loblolly
pines. But rut season means hunting season.
Nothing will keep the bolt action rifles
from up the deer stand opening weekend.
Trail cameras show a trophy buck behind
the antlers. Look for the does, the hunting
websites advise— let their estrus work
for you. Tonight, she is startled by another
act of cruelty, reading about the British radio
host— Steve Allen— atop his platform,
the crosshairs of his tongue fixed on chubby
little thing Tilly Ramsay. Let us not forget,
taxidermists prepare for every girl.
Chronic Pain
A woman finds her husband has been on dating apps / she regrets looking through his iPad / insomnia / This isn’t the first time she’s had to find the hammer / Sometimes it’s in the junk drawer, sometimes under the sink / It seems to appear in her hand / She rubs her thumb over its steel head— cold & smooth & hardened like memory / Eight years earlier this woman earned a modest advance for her book / She bought a laptop / The day she approved the galleys, she went into labor / Her husband covered his eyes with his Dodgers hat / he couldn’t watch //
Their daughter broke through the amniotic sac / The new mother didn’t sleep for months / She soaked her swollen vagina in warm water, filled hospital gloves with ice and stuffed them into her panties to soothe the stitched flesh / Before long, she found herself using the hammer on the laptop— shards of glass & silicon & plastic landed in the creases of the stroller /
Her daughter is older and / she watches her mother on the front porch smashing the iPad with a hammer / her father comes home with a new tattoo that spells her mother’s name in cursive / as the girl’s thumb rubs over the bandage, she wonders how much it hurt.
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