With apologies to the deer on I-76

Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A hard November, again on a Tuesday,
where office workers pass out holiday wish lists,
(chain restaurant gift cards are good presents,
and often requested as a small prize for a week
done well). Traffic hums and cars
with personalized plates
bolt their people back home.

                                                                      On the I-76
a deer, thin as dread, undecidedly steps
beneath the overpass, a place he can’t name.
Stilt legs tremble, a little buckle, realizing he is lost
his body streams ghosts as the air pulls off him.
Icicle puffs from his nose make comic book
word clouds and inside those are questions.
His breaths hang in the air, unanswered.
He turns toward the guardrail and then the
concrete wall curious for forgiving ground. He wants
nothing that we can give: some cool grass, a little
silence, and a place soft enough to stand on.

Jane-Rebecca Cannarella is a writer and editor living in Philadelphia. She helps edit HOOT Review, a magazine on postcards, and Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, a broadside press. Jane-Rebecca is the author of Better Bones (Thirsty West), Thirst & Frost (Vegetarian Alcoholic), and others. She is the guardian to several cats and a consumer of too much salt. The owner of a Jason & the Argonauts Blu-Ray, which she thought was a record when purchasing at the thrift store, but no Blu Ray player, Jane-Rebecca works as an immigration paralegal.