by Jim Ross
Deer family
after Paige Lewis and Ovid
This Greencard about about to expire
& that Canadian permit
delayed laid with errors
I bordered on the border of our neighbor’s
with the towering forest for whom borders
are just a tickled branch
just for a moment
left dear lovey & our lovey playing
on a frozen pond & pondered into
the evergreens on my
new German boots
then crunched & crunched a most satisfying
trail till I stared at the white-tailed doe
who came to say hello
& coyly stayed
then went away but soon came back telling
all side-nods why couldn’t I just follow
I blanked I could not blink
therefore I followed
looking back & felt my leather boots
expand to a thick foreign’s foreign torso
no barcodes needed vis-à-
vis to hop
all neighbor’s neighbor’s fences of bramble
just watch out for hunter’s hunter’s shacks
my last thought how I’d miss
lovey & lovey
when I crossed & crossed my human voice
to the arboreal sprout on my forehead
I’d have left & left you this
poem had I had
time to hesitate but time is human
Carlos A. Pittella is a Latinx Brazilian poet, an accumulator of accents, a pile of expired passports. Having lived in Brazil, Portugal, and the US, he now studies creative writing at Concordia University, Canada. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Tint, Moist, and the VS Podcast. Tweet hi @metaferal.
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding public health research career in hopes of resuscitating his long-neglected right brain. With a graduate degree from Howard University, in the past six years he’s published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and photography in over 175 journals on five continents. Publications include 580 Split, Bombay Gin, Burningword, Camas, Columbia Journal, Feral, Hippocampus, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Lunch Ticket, Manchester Review, Newfound, Stonecoast, The Atlantic, and Typehouse. He’s published photo essays in Kestrel, Litro, New World Writing, Sweet, and Wordpeace. He’s also published photo essays using old postcards in Barren, Ilanot Review and Palaver (forthcoming). Jim and his wife—parents of two health professionals and grandparents of five—split their time between city and mountains.