Night, Memory

There is never just one deer.

The forest clicks bare branches

under a bristling moon.

The field strobes in slow motion,

the sky clean and clear

as a bloodletting.

I am here again

without the bottle or the blade,

my good hands empty,

doing nothing they are asked.

In the blue bedroom of my childhood

my uncle calls me by my given name.

Shivering in the doorway,

I am the bare one

braced like a star, or girl.

The damp field mutes the gallop

of every startled animal.

There is never just one

deer in the middle of the night.

Hannah Bonner's poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Bear Review, Pigeon Pages, Rattle, SAND, The Pinch Journal, The Vassar Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, TriQuarterly, and Two Peach. She is a creative nonfiction MFA candidate at The University of Iowa.