saltlicks don't last long
first year hunting worst wet never ending rain
second year best white white tracks snow
I am the good luck charm where I go
death comes ten years old I am all
shuddering legs too proud to ask
uncle dennis to stop for a while
that year he gets a nine point
father finally has the patience
he takes me tall into the tree just
him and I three years three
deer he carries me into the dark
and carries out bodies it all
stops at thirteen when the blood
trail is between my legs
the deer don't come anymore
they are warned by the smell
of iron
Sarah Summerson's work has been published in OTHER. Magazine, Aji Magazine and Collision Literary Magazine, as well as an anthology of Southwest poems from Dos Gatos Press titled Weaving the Terrain. She is also a winner of the Academy of American Poets Poetry Prize and the William Uhler Hensel Sr. Prize.
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