Stone, Toy Heron, Jaw Bone of a Deer

They’re lovely in a creepy way, she said, but what
do they mean? Three objects on a table—a chance
still life that had reeled her in from across
the room. Honestly, I said, who can say?
She counted final breaths for a living, this nurse,
this neighbor of mine, carcinomas per breast,
cysts per ovary, birthday cakes per weeping
womb, always getting to the bottom of things.
I didn’t hand her Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto.
Didn’t pretend I was practicing immersion
therapy using artifacts from my busted
childhood. Instead I explained I needed
a nice scumble of white to take the scream
out of this redwood table. She shook
her head no and waited for darker truths.
Instead I handed her each object and improvised.
See how the stone fits your hand
like a world, then makes you want to break
a window with it? She was nodding now.
Meanwhile, I said, this heron gets you
thinking about angles, flight, mass production.
Or maybe nests, she said, nests in a spanky
new country where no one will find her clutch
of eggs. Sure, I said, why not? As for this broken
jaw, I said, we found it half buried in an anthill
last Mother’s Day. She turned it over and over,
then rubbed at it, as if trying to free a trapped
genie. So worn out, she said, so bleachy
my fingers itch. Meanwhile the day darkened
into rain, meanwhile she rubbed, meanwhile
bone truths I thought I had a corner on were
gathering in her reckless palm. And the jaw
tried to bite bite bite the room, who knows
how many ghost deer sleeping in each tooth?

 
Lance Larsen

Lance Larsen is the author of five poetry collections, most recently What the Body Knows (Tampa 2018). His poems have appeared in APR, TLS, Southern Review, River Styx, Ploughshares, Poetry, New York Review of Books, and Best American Poetry 2009.  He’s won a number of awards, including a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from Ragdale, Sewanee, and the National Endowment for the Arts.  He teaches at BYU, where he serves as department chair and fools around with aphorisms: “Gesundheit!—as close as I’ve come to Nietzsche and Heidegger in months.”  In 2017 he completed a five-year appointment as Utah’s poet laureate.

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Abandoned Truck in a Field

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Anthropocene Anxiety Disorder