The Mule Deer

Yesterday, I witnessed a mule deer separate into its major

components: mule and deer. They sprinted gently into trees.

I thought fencing and of fencing. Though long ago

I’d acknowledged thinking to be a spontaneous sport,

I made sense of a mule deer splitting and concluded fencing

a situation in which I expected blood but did not perceive.

These words I intend not for me to appear a braggart:

I am a careerist bread maker. Left with little time to sympathize

with mules, I invent devices for ease. I pedal wheat-grinding

contraptions rendered from bad bicycles. In my free time,

I miss my wife. Often alone with my fanatical hair

and the transferable qualities of wagons, my remedy for

loneliness is delivering bread to people. Thrilled by

indispensable hats and a town’s worth of plates, I am split

from a wintry mood, but here that thought comes again:

Where in the tundra went the deer of yesterday?

To my left, the snow. Ahead, the road my mule and I trot.

The air is rickety with wagon. The air flops the mule’s ears,

which cause me to recall again that mistaken word:

antlers. I watch the word bound into the woods.

Isaac George Lauritsen is a writer and illustrator. His work can be found, or is forthcoming, in Bennington Review, Hobart Pulp, Jabberwock Review, Muzzle Magazine, Red Rock Review, Sidereal Review, TIMBER, Your Impossible Voice, on a broadside from Octopus Books, and elsewhere. He lives in New Orleans.