What Deer Season Means To Me

In the house there were always two
white deep freezers packed pretty
decent with red meat. Deer season,
the hunters and the deer would satisfy
rent in season, by meat if not by cash.
It was May, I was fifteen and we smelled
fifteen or so throughout the warm insides
of the man-handled school bus, when pops
steers quick and clear to dodge the deer
and Shirlean yells, “I didn’t even know it was
deer season.” As if deer only lived so they
could be killed during deer season.
What’s a deer outside of deer season,
except a reason for deer season?

–A. H. Jerriod Avant

Copyright © 2019 by A. H. Jerriod Avant.
This poem originally appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2019. Used with permission of the author.

The Finality of Mourning Doves

They say death comes in threes but
it comes
in twos
two doves
at dusk
and then
two more
in
mourning
for those who do not
wake at dawn.
Crowned in olive branches
they float between
realms like
angels
who must do
the dirty work
the summoning
the reckoning
the final judgement.
Please do not be cross
seeing them tut together
while you are alone,
rather
love them for the
relief of the rain
on your tired bowed head
that they bring.
Like rain falling down,
doves will fly always
in pairs of two
devoted
plaintive
because they are the ones
who must always mourn
the loss of souls.

–Briana Gagnon