He said he saw a deer dragging barbed wire,
its mouth white with foam, its eyes
dim. And I had little to offer, so I told him
about the recording of the dying bird in the subway,
its agony forcing the living birds
to leave some distance, between themselves
and the horror of it, a kind of mercy.
What could I say? For all our speaking
I could not disprove his still lying present.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 16, Issue 1.
Janice Greenwood studied poetry at the University of Florida and at Columbia University, where she was a Benjamin T. Burns Fellow in poetry. Her poems have appeared in ARC Poetry Magazine, DIAGRAM, New England Review, Southeast Review, Western Humanities Review and elsewhere.
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