Pennsylvania: I 81
Corona: 19
You: Shoulder Deep in a Warm Deer
the happiest vulture
the happiest creature
I’ve ever seen
Surpassing my dog
Henry the 8th ‘s supreme indulgence
Cannot approach yours
You burrow your head
in steamy ribbons
of pulsing pink
roll your shoulders into it
feathers soaked
Like Mae West
Dripping wit
of course, I feel sorry for the deer, but she had nothing to do with you
By the time I drove by
By the time you dove in
She lay dead and the blame
Passed with a truck or car
Of which there were few on the road that day
This being a plague
And good luck for you!
A full lane to yourself!
I ask where are the other vultures?
(Busy on other highways?)
Is it better for a car-killed deer to twitch under flies?
Why are lions who, auto-like, leave so much waste, noble?
The deer doesn’t care
And I
Seeing you deep in glory
Am lifted up!
Look! I cry to my kid, Ecstasy!
For the first time in days, my shoulders relax
Why constrict happiness to a pig in shit?
Dionysius knows
You are no pernicious lawyer, slumlord, preacher
But a reveling charge of vivified cells
So, Metaphors not be with you, Bird
But my love
And Henry’s? and Mae’s?
Always
MFC Feeley lives in Tuxedo, NY and attended UC Berkeley and NYU. She wrote a series of ten stories inspired by the Bill of Rights for Ghost Parachute and has published in SmokeLong, Jellyfish Review, Brevity Blog, Liar’s League, and others. Feeley was a Fellow at the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and twice received scholarships to the Wesleyan Writers Conference. Winner of the 2018 Raven Prize for Creative Non-Fiction, her work appears in Best Microfictions 2020. She has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and The Pushcart Prize, and was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarterfinalist. She has judged for Mash Stories and Scholastic. During the Viral Outbreak she reads favorite public domain excerpts at https://www.facebook.com/QuarantineStorytimewithMFCFeeley
More of her writing at MFC Feeley/Facebook and on Twitter MFC Feeley @FeeleyMfc
