Kate Puxley, Gancho (charcoal on paper, 68x48", 2012)
I wasn’t a deer,
in the subterranean passage
from shadows to forms,
darkness to light.
I did not leap silently
out of the frame
and go bounding,
boundless, into the
black thicket,
never to be seen again
by humans, until confronted
with the aluminum hood
of a car. Still, I ache
for them, the way
a poem aches for its
left margin,
for disciplinarity
in a sea of riot.
I watch the white space
collapse around me.
The remaining letters spell
vehicle of necessity.
The animal, I ask,
or the heart?