Martha Collins

rain scratches at the deer’s coat

as if trying to get inside, washes the antlers

of blood, like a curator cleaning the bones

of a saint in the crypt beneath a church

at the end of a century,

The rain scratches at the deer’s coat

as if trying to get inside, washes the antlers

of blood, like a curator cleaning the bones

of a saint in the crypt beneath a church

at the end of a century,

This must be

what love is:

a pain so radiant

it cuts through all others.

Though they cannot be deciphered,

cannot become lighter,

all moments will shine

if you cut them open,

glisten like entrails in the sun.

The fever grows deeper

into itself, tender-rooted flowers

inside the belly of the horse,

inside the eye of the boy

who again tries to feed it the hay,

gently cups its mouth.

The horse will not come.

And when it does,

when the boy offers it hay,

it bites the center of his palm

which purples with blood.

In twenty years, the boy

will place a shotgun in his mouth

while his child sleeps.

I know first there was light

to give the void a shape. I know

what has no beginning cannot end.

I can hardly see your face out here

but I can hear you breathing.

but no, darkness is a substance

that bends.

Love has been gone

for some time now.

I have sawed through my own leg

trying to find the way back.

In one story, a fox curled into a tree hollow

like a flame into a corpse’s mouth

body your fallen light

the sunken sound of your voice

in the water