Out-take As a Sonnet of War

The severed deer leg said red, 
as if red were something to be said.

My head fell off and rolled over the mossy
embankment. I followed, my neck austere

and cold and salmonberry-covered, running
with a colored orange and the yellow sun

coming up over the edge of the canyon
though we could not see the canyon

and even if we could wouldn't we have leapt
into it? I carried the deer's body, I kept

checking to see if its heart still beat.
Meanwhile behind me the bombs retreated

into the fog and I could hear my mother
hum: Don't you have a brother

out there, too? Do you want to know
how we're all doing? So I'm going

to check with those in charge, I'm asking
the questions, even if I get answers.

Meanwhile my trachea began to close,
shiver and shiver and open. Meanwhile

I tore off the deer’s head, attached it
to the stump of my own neck.

---

Maya Jewell Zeller is the author, most recently, of out takes/glove box (fall 2023), chosen by Eduardo Corral as winner of the New American Poetry Prize. Maya’s memoir manuscript, Raised by Ferns, was runner up in the AWP Sue Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction. Maya is Associate Professor at Central Washington University, and Affiliate Faculty in Poetry and Nature Writing in low-residency MFA at Western Colorado University.