Lesley Jenike

In my cries I don’t cease (some dumb bird) when from the swinging trees a stag at eve comes prancing, body dappled by the shadows of dripping leaves. It’s fall, after all, when the land undoes its lingerie laces and stands naked for the dark wood, balding plains, for parking lots slick with strange water, for hills growing lush in emptiness and into this scene enters the stag, moon lunate and swinging on a tether of leather scored then cured, from one just like him a year earlier. Some dumb bird, I bid him hello and goodbye in a shriek so lusty he turns his expensive head just to curse me.