after Brigit Pegeen Kelly

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1.

There is a stag in the apple tree,

           head mounted on the middle bough.

The stag was shot by a child who

          will take after his father. Daddy helped

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him hold the gun. Show me the holy

          hunter: the stag in the autumn brush

crying for sex. His song concupiscent,

          cerise of tongue. But the doe hears

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only Death. She knows the thrum,

          the drum of Danger, daughter of.

The stag by the brook and the earth,

          darkens. Will she think of the dead stag

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bleating for her body as she bows to

          her groom in a glade of grasses, womb

throbbing on the late spring asters as

          she licks the afterbirth from her babe.

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2.

Listen: I have come to know the dead

          come back through the arbor, make an

afterlife in the trees. Once, I watered

          the apple tree with my menstrual blood.

Feared for years — I had killed it. But

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          the apple dons a flame that Death cannot

choke out: her fruit rosid as cherry

          cover the walk in her saccharine cider

of decay. The aroma of autumn

          sensuous, charred, feasting. Long past

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her thirtieth year, the apple hangs on.

          Respectively, such an age is one third of

a third — of a breath. And now, the

          head of a stag stares from the limb, his

ash blond coat struck by the carnation

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          hours of dawn. On summer nights, the

auburn leaves and globose pomes of

          the apple blaze, feigning death. And I

hear the apple calling to the orchard,

          the stag singing his body to the tree.