Ana Pugatch
January First
Snow traces
evening light.
A fox with a
crook in its tail,
a good omen for
the new year.
Imperfect ink
of black paws
across white
snow. To call
the small gray-
headed crow.
She’s 58 years
old. To know
she won’t call
back. Winter
won’t thaw
the jackdaw
at dusk.
The Dollmaker
Age nine, body of a doll.
My bangs fell above
my eyes in a stick straight
line of fear.
Dark blonde, darkened
hallway. I always ran
straight up the stairs
past
my least favorite painting,
“The Dollmaker.” Six by six,
black oil canvas. The man
was wrapped
in a loin cloth, sat in a chair.
Sockets hollowed in
the overhead light.
He rested
his chin in his hand as
the dolls flew about the room,
limbless bodies, some
lost curly heads
suspended like planets
in his orbit. And even though
he brooded and hated, he still
controlled
his creations. To be a doll
who made an escape
from its maker and
tools—
to escape up the stairs, into
a body of darkness.
Minute in the Woods
Michigan
By the time someone hit the brakes and who it was I can’t remember,
the quail’s brood evaporated into empty cornstalks. You couldn’t forget
the mother’s beady eyes, the accusatory plume. I know we got out
to look around. Beyond the rustling field there was a blood-splotch
of woods, its edges seeping toward us. At age six I was known for
bolting out of sight and I tumbled into slaughter. The deer’s neck
was still intact, its entrails gorged with flies. It lifted its head to look
at me, then down at its ribs, exposed. Groaning, nose glistening.
The mushrooms crushed were re-growing themselves when a hand
beckoned from the bush as the trees lit up like matchwood and
it was time to get out. Followed the trail of blood, tear-stained, hoarse.
But I was told I never found a deer because I would’ve told.
After the Party
Snow has a way
of making us
sleep.
Who knows what
shut down first.
Death drank deeply
as her kidneys
ached,
gin pickling
her liver.
Currants
scattered in
her hair
fanned over
ice, like platelets
of fungi whose
bands bloom
outward
in spring.
Isolated eye
of Jupiter’s
storm, blood
thickening.
Found by
late morning’s
permafrost.
Boots removed
in the slate
road. Like
a trucker
veering too far
left, lulled to
sleep by
blowing bands
of snow.
Ana Pugatch is an MFA candidate studying poetry at George Mason University in Virginia. She taught English in China and Thailand for several years. She has a bachelor's in English from Skidmore College, and a master's degree in education from Harvard. Her work has been published in Thin Air Magazine, Cagibi, PØST-, and Foothill Poetry Journal, among others.