i bet that at this moment
the others are scoring with the two-legged
spitting at trees
lying on all fours in some meadow
drinking
then arguing about the tuning of harps

i'd made that joke about mermaids
but none of them laughed
and so i cantered out here with my bow
ready to catch some red thing that'd be juicy
turned on a spit

strange how i found this miniature buck
with the body of a dog
it moves almost as if it'd been stuffed
i chased it to the end of these squashed-down mountains
marked now only by the squasher's fingerprints
or maybe that's his Brylcreemed head
disappearing like the sun over the greasy horizon
the mountains a lumpy cake
cupped against his doltish chest

and now i'm nervous
more unsure than you'd expect
for this many centuries BC:
something's made me pause
my bowstring pulled half back
the last ripple of a wave of something
come up to my human head from
my horse body

perhaps it's how the sky
lifts up its inky seersucker
in front of the deer
allows it clear passage through the empty white
as if it mistook its prow
for a speedboat's rack
the driver a yahoo with an aerodynamic face
calling into the wind
or perhaps it's how the deer
begins to slip behind
the printed frame out into the pleasant
dead air of the page beyond
the deer's small rectangle of mind
not flinching
and here i am
bound to the marked land
my shadow beneath me

probably you think
it is the unsettling rhyme between
its body and my own
that has freeze-framed me
but it's not that though
it's my human half that's been stunned
as if i'd looked
straight into some headlights
beaming toward me from across the plain

look at my eyes:
you can see that
soon as i come to
i'll gallop home to the others
take my harp
sing of how when my end is near
i'll Brylcreem my hair
disappear over the mountains
a ducktailed cowboy
a fading orange horse