Two Poems by Jennifer K. Sweeney

Antlers

Out of velvet, winter.
Out of the center, the idea splits.

Wilder stars, my eyes leap
my head is soft,

it does not end here in the cleft
between my ears:

fragment, dream, map that arrows
in the mist.

In the widening fields I become
silent, a stillness

that makes light in spring
harden into branches.

Say: what I will bear.
What flanked impulse swells in me.

Mothbone, amulet,
the milked horn

flares.
I go sky, crown

in all directions.
Run like a tree

into the wind.

Bat Milk

They do, they do—
inside the living mountain

where night is a constant—
curl up like a god’s

shuttered eye
and wait as I waited

body of my body
we sing the same

blood warm song.
Casements wrapped in ink

they are to themselves
the center of the earth

by which all things
distinguish

though still they may ask
as I have asked

staring across
the battered plain

what monster what
monster am I?

Midwife of shadow
the first milk breath

hums in the mineral sky.

Jennifer K. Sweeney is the author of Little Spells (New Issues Press), How to Live on Bread and Music, which received the James Laughlin Award, the Perugia Press Prize and a nomination for the Poets’ Prize, and Salt Memory. She lives in Redlands, California, and teaches at the University of Redlands.