2012 
TLR logo

THE LITERARY
REVIEW

 

 

READ MORE 

an electronic publication
(issue #10) 

 

Steven Heighton

Collision

 

 

Away in the eyefar
nightrise over the sapwood, and one likes

under hooves the heatfeel after sun flees, heat stays on this

smooth to the hoof hardpan, part trail

part saltlick now as snowlast moults back

into the sapwood

to yard and rot

and one sees moonrise mounding

over a groundswell, but too soon and swifter

like never the moon one knows, no moon at all,

two moons fawned, both small, too hot, they

come with a growling and

hold one fast, so chafing for flight

but what, what, what, what

wondering--

 

and one can't move and can't although one

knows from backdays, eared and glimpsed

through sapwood  budwood  cracklewood  bonewood

flashes of this same Wolfing

                                                    now upon one, still

stalls the hooves on the saltlick and the eyebright

creature squeals       afraid?--and one somehow

uphoofed in a bound not chosen high as if to flee with no

trying, no feeling, fallen           flankflat, fawnlike

eyes above in the eyefar closing small

with the world

 

                            and now from the stopped thing

comes what      its cub?   legged up on its hinds,

kneels low to touch, but in that awful

touch, no feel       no fear to feel

no at all--

 

Steven Heighton is the author of the novel Afterlands, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. His stories and poems have appeared in London Review of Books, Poetry, Tin House, and Best English Stories.

 

"Collision" appeared in our Winter 2011 issue, The Rogue Idea. It has been chosen by Mark Doty for this year's edition of Best American Poetry.

  
NEW YORK CITY 
EVENT: TLR 
READING
TLR Winter 2012
AND LAUNCH
MARCH 20TH, 7-9 PM

 

 

Join us Monday, March 20th, to
launch 
The Lives of the Saints
at powerHouse Arena in Dumbo,
Brooklyn.

Drinks will be served.
Readings by Priscilla Becker,
Danielle Blau, and Adam Wilson

 

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ABOUT THE

LITERARY REVIEW

 

The Literary Review is an international journal of contemporary writing that has been published quarterly since 1957 by Fairleigh Dickinson University.

  

With our best wishes,

 

Minna Proctor

Editor, The Literary Review