Dana Koster

folio

Wretched Be

Oh Lord of dust. Oh God 
of drought babies, of Butte fires,
of ash-falls that blur the midday sun
into an ember. I am calling you to say
we are not sorry for this ruin
we have made. Let it burn.
We’ve given you nothing
we don’t hope to receive in return.

The White Hart

I.
Something in the darkness licked at his ears 
till his mind felt full to burst, coiling itself 
near the shape of cougars and Bigfoot. Eager
as he was to try the new rifle, he’d lost sight
of a trail hours before, and clung to hope
the phantom music was just a song carried 
from Jesse’s radio. That if he followed it, 
he’d find his brother asleep, Budweiser in hand. 
But the lilting sound only led him deeper 
into the brush, and the goathead burrs punctured 
his field pants, stuck his thigh and calf so that days
later, he was still picking them out with pliers. 
When he spied light in the distance, a white flank,
he thought the hart was God-sent, glowing as it was.

II.
He thought the hart was God-sent, glowing as it was,
a malevolent angel horned with white spires,
and if only you could claim the beast as yours, 
you could climb him to redemption. Preacher said
the Israelites wandered forty years before
they found salvation, and Lord knows they did
much worse than shoot a deer. God’s creatures put up 
their fight or flight, but aren’t they here to serve man, 
as we serve the Lord? Wouldn’t be any 
different than picking off pheasants for supper.
And besides, there’s nothing sacred could live in 
a body made of meat. He raised the rifle slow,
so as not to startle it, but the sucker ran.
He pressed on, and the darkness pressed back.

III.
He pressed on, and the darkness pressed back, 
transforming dry brush to tree shadow in six steps, 
scritch of boots on grassland to mossy silence.  
But he had no wonder left in him. Hardly 
had it back when he and Jesse were boys 
stealing apricots from the neighbor’s field
‘cause Mama left again. To him, the sudden 
forestation was just his first luck in years –
whether whirling lights were fireflies or ghost orbs, 
they lit the deersign something fierce: he could see
the imprint of hoof track now, a trail of rubs, bark 
unmistakably marred where a buck had used it 
to remove antler velvet. The hart was close.
He took the safety off and kept walking.

IV.
He took the safety off and kept walking,
new rifle hefted tight, just under his shoulder.
Gripped it hard the way he wanted to grip 
Mary’s arms at night when she turned away from him. 
When she moaned at the burden of that baby
riding further up her ribs, he remembered 
slipping both hands under her flannel nightgown
until she moaned for him and only him. 
Ain’t that the damndest thing? Baby wasn’t even 
here yet and already Mary had chosen 
it over him. He gripped his knuckles white.
His barrel thieved a blue gleam from the dawn,
almost vulgar in its polished beauty, ready 
to kiss the hart’s smooth shoulder with a bullet.

V.
To kiss the hart’s smooth shoulder with a bullet,
he had to find it first. But it was like
making that baby – like everything, really – 
soon as you’ve tried and failed so many times
you’re sure it’s a snipe you been hunting,
there it is: plain as the booze on Daddy’s breath
when you land that first punch at thirteen.
Body gone mechanic. Don’t even think – one moment
your wife straddles you like she has a hundred times, 
next you’re becoming a father.  All down to reflex:  
he saw the glow in the trees, looked down his scope 
and shot – quick as he shot Daddy on that 
hunting trip in ’73. With practiced ease, 
the acrid scent of deer piss hanging on his sleeves.

VI.
The acrid scent of deer piss hanging on his sleeves
used to make him gag. A deer stumbling to its knees,
new hole blooming on its hide would make his ears sing,
his blood buzz.  Especially a good shot, like this was.  
But the hart fell without dynamism. Maybe 
he thought its white glow would grow brighter upon death. 
Arc out in a blast wave – touch this whole sorry world 
with its light.  But the white hart fell, and it was just 
a buck lying in a field.  Another dead deer.  
And when he raised his eyes to the forest he’d seen
sprout around him, he saw no fireflies, no moss,
no trees but the ones that slipped from his periphery
soon as he turned his head.  Mired in brush, he was 
alone as ever. Even the white hart was gone.

VII.
Alone as ever. Even the white hart was gone;
only the curl of smoke from his rifle, the tang
of gunpowder told him there’d been violence here.
Wasn’t that the way it always was? Put on
a turtleneck and you’d look the same as any 
other sad sack in school; no one could see your dread 
of that last bell or the red handprints ringing your neck. 
Best you could do was keep moving, swear to never 
touch your kid, not even to brush away a stray hair. 
He walked most of the day – safety off, rifle 
cradled in the crook of his arm – til he found smoke. 
His brother dead drunk, passed out next to the fire.
And in the growing light, a dim feeling that
something in the darkness licked at his ears.

Rod of Iron

Forget frying an egg on the sidewalk        I’d need noon for that    I’d need 

a carton of eggs              I’d need a body egging me on     this body 

is not    little      it’s not late        it’s barely producing eggs

a body is more   than a little bit    

of a problem      

I swear              the heat             turns the city      

to vampires       it’s loathsome    as an ex-lover’s body      it’s hot tap water 

from the cold half of the  faucet              America            it’s the 4th of July            

and I’m just so tired       of being able to sleep      

while a naked man brings an AR-15         to a Waffle House

while a hero                   tells the news     he is not a hero

but someone who figured                       he was going to die anyway                     

and I know        America            that we’re all going to die 

anyway              with guns in our hands   

we        the people         swaying in place

arms raised                    

ecstatic  

in our own horror

Dana Koster was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and grew up in Ventura, California. She earned her English degree from UC Berkeley and MFA in poetry from Cornell University. From 2011-2013, she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. She lives in Modesto, California with her husband and two sons, where she works as a wedding photographer, occasional freelance writer and half of the art partnership Broad Sides with her collaborator, Chelsea America.

Dana's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in EPOCH, Indiana Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Cincinnati Review, PN Review, Clackamas Literary Review, THRUSH Poetry Journal and many others.  She has work in the anthologies America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience, Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books, Haiku of the Living Dead and More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets.  In 2012, she was the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize and a Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award. Her first book, Binary Stars, was published by Carolina Wren Press in 2017.