K Hari

Permit as Ars Poetica

To drive in Ohio at fifteen, over the lolling
tongues of backroads, those muted slopes
between field and oak, requires this
Sunday in a classroom full of shitheads
who laugh at my only friend and take
wild notes when the instructor says,
if you hit a deer, alert the local sheriff
before you put it in your trunk. It’s fine
to take it home and chunk the creature
into your freezer. Just be sure to tell someone
what you’ve done. We are OK with slaughter
out in the open, you hear? All day the bees
knot my ears with their buzzing, I scribble-
scrawl and forget which cable connects
where to jumpstart the vehicle. Sixteen
weeks from now, I’ll do this in the dead
of winter, in the garage without a heater or father
to show me, that friend even farther
away, mother ready to dial AAA
from the gaslight glow of our home, if not
for fear of strangers after dark. After jumping,
the engine’s got to run a while, so I’ll let it,
setting off on foot, forgetting
intention, until I’m jogging
down to the STOP sign that ends in rows
and rows of corn. Will there be nowhere else to go,
but to stars? I’ll cross
the field wading in silver stalks,
to a dirt road knobbed as rheumatic
old hands. Some sycamores will lean
their parchment trunks over the creek
beyond the track and copse, bark
dangling. I’ll wonder
if I could be hit by machine or man,
if I would have doe eyes if caught,
but the flash of headlights is so rare
in these parts, at this hour. My mother
cannot know where I am. Close
to the water, I’ll look for that deer
from the story, let my eyes grow
accustomed to dark. She will come.
I’ll stare at her straight on. She will not balk.
No one will quiver at all, only the water
murmuring over pebbles to smooth them, wind
shushing through everything planted orderly
just behind, before reaching us. I can still
see you, I will tell the creature, more massive
than I could imagine, hard hoofed, even dead.
Where have you been? the deer will reply,
and if I stop meeting her ghost-
gaze for even a moment, I will see how
everyone has gone, and I’m penning asterisk
after asterisk into crammed margins of sky.

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K Hari is a physician and poet of Tamil descent, who is interested in exploring ideas of embodied heritage, hurt and healing in her work. Her poetry can be found in publications such as The Plentitudes, The Margins, Kartika Review and The Brooklyn Review, among others. She was a finalist for the Kundiman Prize and Tupelo Press Snowbound Chapbook Award. She is currently an MFA candidate at New York University and a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist. She resides in Queens, New York.