Doe in Winter
Gretchen Marquette

Doe in Winter

She picks her way to the deer yard,
shelters in pine, eats
what is bitter to her tongue,

doesn’t differentiate pine and to pine.
Can’t explain how relationships
to the body can change,

the pulse of blood in the neck,
resistance of bone under skin; heart
becoming the red knot
you ought not untie.

Gretchen Marquette

has contributed to The Paris Review, Poetry, Tin House, Harper's, and other journals. Her first book, May Day, was released through Graywolf Press in 2016. She lives in Minneapolis.