art by Garth Evans and poetry by Leila Philip. Excerpted from Water Rising, a collaboration between an artist and writer.  See their work in this month’s Woven Tale Press, and a Press interview.

Signals

He came at night or in the early hours,

we were never sure. Always

it was morning when we found

the bag glowing white, his mark

his gift, his signal left

in the path

by the road.

He had his rituals, was

tidy in his way, the white bag tied

neatly at the top, as if it were garbage

from a picnic,  or a bag of clothes

he meant to give away.

You would not know the bag was bursting

with body parts, until a coyote

or someone’s dog ripped open

the white plastic, spilling out deer guts

and viscera, the “lights” now

rotting lungs.

True, sometimes a leg

was left sticking through

the top, the dainty black toes en pointe

like a ballerina, but otherwise

the bag held secrets.

The need to show off was what scared me,

Who we wondered, would bag up body parts,

drive them here?  Would I know him

if I met him at the store?

Each fall I’d find a deer shot

and left, head bent back

in the ellipse of death, tongue grey and swollen

ribs half gone, chewed out by coyotes.

Each day a little more would disappear until

a scatter of bones, white fluff of fur were all that marked

the deer.