A Cut by Kenneth Jakubas

Again we spot the mother deer.
After her head reaches for a branch,
her eyes whip open fear like buttons.

Even the tree’s dead stump,
too tall to be prodigal, hollow,
fills itself with dark, peerless 

holes, homes this whole system
opened reluctantly: phantom-limbed,
a discovery driven back to a grave. 

Even a window is a TV.
It will stand this enterprise
of revision, and it will smile. 

I’ll call everyone upstairs
to see. Our bodies graze,
arm hair a dialogue in retrograde.

The child will say mother.
The mother will say a word for beauty.
The narrator will not be named.

Kenneth Jakubas holds an MFA from Western Michigan University, where he served as the poetry editor for Third Coast Magazine. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Carousel, Gravel, and Sundog Lit, among others. He lives in Kalamazoo, MI with his fiancé and son.