The Southampton Review

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Keeping Out Flowers

Adonis has already arrived
in New York City.
This is what
my mother tells me. 

It is not long then, I hope, 
that he will show
his face over here, 
in the middle of the country. 

From my window, 
three deer are resting 
on what remains
of the snow. 
Now, it is more like
small floats of ice
in a state-wide bed of mud.

But a sign:
hunting season is over.
So they afford themselves 
a certain imprudence, no?

It’s luxury!
Craning tongues
toward those patches of 
intractable hair—wily scruff—
then tossing their heads
about on loosened ground. 

They must be resting
their blond flanks with good reason.
Perhaps cooling their swollen bellies 
hot full of fawn. 
Each delaying, however she can, 
the habit of labor. 

Here are the last girlish moments 
before a mass 
procreative swell—
I, too, am arrested by 
this yet insatiable spring.
Fondling my bottom lip
to fog the glass just enough 
to cloud out the small signs 
of green,
for a few moments.

Adonis should stay away 
for a while. 
For the sake of my girls,
who need just a little longer 
to mind themselves.


RACHEL STEWART received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is the 2020 recipient of the Deena Davidson Friedman Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared in MATTE Magazine