Blood Fever Poem by MARINA GIPPS

You shoot deer with no memory,
winter almost completely fed
to the cornucopia of grey sky.
The sun never arrives for the celebration
in this backlash of elusive dusk.
Over the gaze of brown snow,
you aim so hard the animal breaks.
All mothers gone, the odd midwestern
laughter of pubs intoxicated with brewery breath.
Exhale the outdoorsy sin,
the quiet poem
of mad earth rumbling.
Somewhere beneath the melting
of sad season, a small river awaits
more rain creating a new lake
for the eyes stream.
A melodrama of getting through
the folklorishly thick forest,
the snow now burnt red
beyond the brown sugar of game skin,
cured for the feast on this pagan Sunday.
All calendar days windblown,
a smattering of body parts
for we will not eat the bowels,
the eyes, the skin, nor the teeth
and we will not hang the face
as a reminder in our coiled living rooms.
The grass, a green lamp glowing
underground, long decayed,
for the months coast every so slowly.
Only those mahogony saplings I keep,
twigs in my pocket like crude sabres,
small light of a voice murmuring
of that snow at the foot of a hill
we can never mount.
You carry home this dreary road
on your broken back.