Pascale Petit
Tell me there is a meadow, afterwards,
that the roe stag will come
to the top of my garden,
that the window will cut me
with glass blades
of dewy hooves.
That I’ll lay out my doe mask,
my necklace of icicles,
onto the deep windowsill.
Tell me the stag will be there
among nettles and briar, his mouth
panting, his lungs clear.
That his legs won’t tangle
in the electric wire
around my tower.
That if he can’t find his way
back into the before,
his horns jewelled
with thorns and flowers
might grow into a tall grove.
Tell me that even in my solitude,
my altar goods laid out
to the god of woods,
that this red deer
against the steep viridian field
will sprout a ladder between his tines
that I can climb.
That his antlers will be strong
as my spine, that I will scale
the rungs of myself
out onto the clouded
chancel of the sky, my body
slick as a newborn fawn.
This poem begins with a line by Lucie Brock-Broido and was first published in New Humanist.
Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales and now lives in Cornwall. She is of French, Welsh and Indian heritage. Her eighth collection, Tiger Girl, from Bloodaxe in 2020, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and for Wales Book of the Year. A poem from the book won the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize. Her seventh poetry collection Mama Amazonica, published by Bloodaxe in 2017, won the inaugural Laurel Prize in 2020, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize in 2018, was shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize, and was a Poetry Book Society Choice.