Lisa Zimmerman

Writing About a Deer Because You Can’t Write About Cancer

for Ilyse

The bone loop of the vertebrae whitens in the air
like every bitter grief held up to the sun—
love’s sad bracelet. Falling through

its empty center is sky and the sweet smoke
of an early death—like a woman who leaves the party first.
Never mind the heart’s shipwreck, cold seawater.

Its weight in the palm is porous wood.
How she was tall in a certain way and lay down in the end.
Splinter of longing in the before and after.

Hold the bone to your ear. Listen as the far meadow rises
in birdsong, faint music lifts from a bedroom window,
the last of summer sobs quietly in her room.

And blood, that old memory, iron on the tongue,
bloomed in her life’s capillaries
only to pool on the doorstep.

Bone window open to the other side
you can’t see from here—
so you set it on the kitchen sill

where the sun falls again and again.

Lisa Zimmerman’s poetry collections include How the Garden Looks from Here (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award), The Light at the Edge of Everything (Anhinga Press) and The Hours I Keep (Main Street Rag). Her chapbook Sainted is forthcoming (Main Street Rag 2021). Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Redbook, The Sun, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Cave Wall, Amethyst Review, Florida Review, SWWIM Every Day and other journals. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net, five times for the Pushcart Prize, and included in the 2020 Best Small Fictions anthology. Lisa is a coach for the Poetry Out Loud high school recitation project and lives with her husband in Fort Collins, Colorado. She is a Professor of English and creative writing at the University of Northern Colorado.