Unpronounced

1 Minute Read Time

A stag with antlers in shadow, with hills and trees as dark shadows as well, with an orange sky behind — Photo by Diana Parkhouse on Unsplash

Stretched out across the white-on-blue
my friend Nathanial Birdsong
is dying under the same sky as the egrets

who mispronounce his name, dying
in the same hospital that admitted
my parents after the deer crash.

When we were kids, the forest sky
was filled with loopholes and
a deer leapt out of the night,

hind smashed against the Bronco
windshield. I could not stop crying,
Nathanial and I in the back seat,

reddened deer squealing above the radio
playing the Pixies’ “Debaser.”
A pack of wild circumstance

seemed to grab Nathanial by the legs.
He left the jackknifed car to find
the creature pulseless, meadow-dead.

Nathanial’s palm touched its haunch
and the stag rose, skin slick
with new life. What if I hadn’t

pulled my hand away so quickly
when Nathanial returned to the car
to hold it. From that moment

I couldn’t speak his name
without stammering. I wanted
to grow up to be someone else,

someone who doesn’t cry when he drives
at night. I repeat small, hard-to-pronounce
words at different angles to make them

behave strangely for dying Nathanial,
who could never touch himself
the way he touched the deer in me.

Ted Mico

Ted Mico’s poetry has recently featured in The High Window, The Ilanot Review, Lumina Journal, Slipstream, Arboreal Literary Magazine, and Cordite Poetry Review. Mico began his writing career as features editor for the Melody Maker and has edited three books of nonfiction.

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