What the deer remembers
by Elizabeth Garcia
when the bracken shakes first human
first chartreuse of any year all the lives
of the plowed earth the dream
of potatoes that sustains the waif
through the siege the long wait
in the ground for resurrection
forgiveness the vined and mossy walls
of the monastery the answer
to the question you don’t yet know
how to ask the weed sprung up overnight
veins full of milk its leaves like fingers gripping
the bedsheet of earth moved with the fear
(like you my son) it may not be loved
so it morphs to seed becomes the first last
ubiquitous every possible future gowned in the air
a kind of knowledge like moonlight, its ache
its arcing voice and when I buckle
let me smell all this, your hair,
let it be the earth and hold me up
Elizabeth Cranford Garcia’s work has appeared in publications such as Boxcar Poetry Review, 491 Magazine, Yellow Chair Review, Mom Egg Review, Psaltery & Lyre, as well as two anthologies, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart prize. She is the current Poetry Editor for Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought and previous Poetry Editor for Segullah. Her first chapbook, Stunt Double, was published in 2015 through Finishing Line Press. She’s a SAHM of three in Acworth, Georgia. Read more of her work at elizabethcgarcia.wordpress.com.
