Fabulous Furry Freak Brother
        —for Kasey Mohammed

In 1996 in Helena Montana
I discovered a deer head in a Dumpster
with the eyes of Ezra Pound
In spite of the deer head's obvious fascism
and preposthumous anti-Semitic utterances
I couldn't help but sympathize with its imprisonment
in a metal box made for tipping
like something domestic not something wild to be milked
There was some carcass in there too
but mainly it was the eyes thanks to my prying
lid raised to catch the eye of the sun
glaring in deer season not wabbit season
not duck season a time to kill
or to scribble or to speak into a microphone
while the Allies fight their way up the Italian coast
I haven't yet mentioned the horns
made to entangle brush, to engage the forest in the business of deerness
selv' oscura
the deer head gone down to the underworld
to mount itself to some speaking ghost
upside-down on a scaffold over a trench I cut
to fill with whose blood my own
or the reader's
in 2004 100,000 people file by Reagan's coffin
he's still talking up debt
angry eye sad eye deadeye
our aim is true
the gun unloaded