growing a mule deer

Something I’ve meant to do now that I’m alone.
Once I grew a horse from oak trees,

added the taste of escargot, shallot butter
and burgundy I fed him on the Rue de Rivoli

hoping my husband would put down his lug nuts
and tweeters, wonder why he hadn’t heard

my Appaloosa kicking the floorboards,
counting oats under our mahogany bed.

It could be the cold moon tonight that
draws you outside in your robe and overcoat,

mucking around for the tin Christmas tree bucket,
almost French. It is in this moon shaped bucket

that your mule deer will be grown, though
you have no idea how. Only that

it might be best to assemble him in the dark:
handfuls of nasturtium, twelve pounds endive,

brown mohair, standing water from the bird bath.
You pour a dead champagne and think how

childish it is growing a mule deer just because
nothing feeds you, nestles its animal content

against your skin. Why should you care anyway,
waiting for its struggling limbs, blueberry

lips coughing up night smoke. How will it recognize
the taste of your fingers, its own wick

of a body covered in ferns, how will it know
you’re not going to hurt it.

PLUMS

Last night I took a chainsaw to the plum tree,
whacked branch from branch until two stumps

stood vacant against the house. It was twilight,
the dog gnawing the plum wood like a homeless

squirrel, my body slick as raunchy perfume, blight
of crisp leaves. The thing is dead I told myself

each homely twig refusing to explain, the fractured
kaput of old bone, but I heard the plums in their

little dreams, wearing sweaters in summer because
there was no hope. Don’t think of these things

anymore I tell them, even though I am uncertain
what the end means, only that I need to work harder

against memory, celebrate these haunted begonias,
starving limes, green ocean of lady fern still breathing.