You’re seventeen and tunnel-vision drunk, 
swerving your father’s Fairlane wagon home
at 3:00 a.m. Two-lane road, all curves 
and dips—dark woods, a stream, a patchy acre
of teazle and grass. You don’t see the deer 
till they turn their heads—road full of eyeballs,
small moons glowing. You crank the wheel, 
stamp both feet on the brake, skid and jolt
into the ditch. Glitter and crunch of broken glass 
in your lap, deer hair drifting like dust. Your chin
and shirt are soaked—one eye half-obscured 
by the cocked bridge of your nose. The car
still running, its lights angled up at the trees. 
You get out. The deer lies on its side.
A doe, spinning itself around
in a frantic circle, front legs scrambling,
back legs paralyzed, dead. Making a sound—
again and again this terrible bleat.
You watch for a while. It tires, lies still. 
And here’s what you do: pick the deer up
like a bride. Wrestle it into the back of the car—
the seat folded down. Somehow, you steer
the wagon out of the ditch and head home, 
night rushing in through the broken window,
headlight dangling, side-mirror gone. 
Your nose throbs, something stabs
in your side. The deer breathing behind you, 
shallow and fast. A stoplight, you’re almost home
and the deer scrambles to life, its long head 
appears like a ghost in the rear-view mirror
and bites you, its teeth clamp down on your shoulder 
and maybe you scream, you struggle and flail
till the deer, exhausted, lets go and lies down.
2
Your father’s waiting up, watching tv.
He’s had a few drinks and he’s angry.
Christ, he says, when you let yourself in. 
It’s Night of the Living Dead. You tell him
some of what happened: the dark road, 
the deer you couldn’t avoid. Outside, he circles
the car. Jesus, he says. A long silence. 
Son of a bitch, looking in. He opens the tailgate,
drags the quivering deer out by a leg. 
What can you tell him—you weren’t thinking,
you’d injured your head? You wanted to fix 
what you’d broken—restore the beautiful body,
color of wet straw, color of oak leaves in winter? 
The deer shudders and bleats in the driveway.
Your father walks to the toolshed,
comes back lugging a concrete block.
Some things stay with you. Dumping the body 
deep in the woods, like a gangster. The dent
in your nose. All your life, the trail of ruin you leave.

Yes, indeed, that is my house that I am carrying around 
on my back like a bullet-proof shell and yes, that sure is
my little dog walking a hard road in hard boots. And 
just wait until you see my girl, chomping on the chains
of fate with her mouth full of jagged steel. She’s damn
ready and so am I. What else did you expect from the 
brainiacs of my generation? The survivors, the nonbelievers, 
the oddball-outs with the Cuban Missile Crisis still 
sizzling in our blood? Don’t tell me that you bought 
our act, just because our worried parents (and believe me,
we’re nothing like them) taught us how to dress for work
and to speak as if we cared about our education. And 
I guess the music fooled you: you thought we’d keep 
the party going even to the edge of the abyss. Well,
too bad. It’s all yours now. Good luck on the ramparts.
What you want to watch for is when the sky shakes
itself free of kites and flies away. Have a nice day.