I just have to make the disclaimer now that this poem is NOT mine, all credit goes to Louise Erdrich (if u ever get the chance, plz support her works in any way u can, she's fab). since this is a deer-related poem, I thought u guys might appreciate it as much as I do~

a bit of background on the poem-- I read this in my Environmental Lit class, and absolutely fell in LOVE. the imagery is so intense and unsettling in a frightening, exhilarating way, and goddamn, I just can't say enough about it

Erdrich is part Ojibwa (her Wiki says she's specifically a part of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, but I'm somewhat reluctant to rely solely on Wiki info if I have yet to see such specific info in at least a few other places too, BUT there ya go), so a lot of her work focuses on Ojibwa myths and legends, and this poem is a beautiful example of that

WARNING- this poem undoubtedly contains themes of death (or, at least, attempted murder), and slightly gruesome imagery. also, depending on how u read this poem, this could have rape/attempted rape themes. that's exactly how I read it the first time, and I still personally think that these themes were purposefully written into the poem, BUT if u read it more from the base of that antelope myth, it becomes something else entirely. so I'm not gonna say it DOES have rape themes, but it COULD, so tread carefully

ANYWAYS, enough talking ABOUT the poem, here's the poem itself~
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The Strange People
By Louise Erdrich

The antelope are strange people ... they are beautiful to look at, and yet they are tricky. We do not trust them. They appear and disappear; they are like shadows on the plains. Because of their great beauty, young men sometimes follow the antelope and are lost forever. Even if those foolish ones find themselves and return, they are never again right in their heads.
—Pretty Shield,
Medicine Woman of the Crows
transcribed and edited by
Frank Linderman (1932)

All night I am the doe, breathing
his name in a frozen field,
the small mist of the word
drifting always before me.

And again he has heard it
and I have gone burning
to meet him, the jacklight
fills my eyes with blue fire;
the heart in my chest
explodes like a hot stone.

Then slung like a sack
in the back of his pickup,
I wipe the death scum
from my mouth, sit up laughing
and shriek in my speeding grave.

Safely shut in the garage,
when he sharpens his knife
and thinks to have me, like that,
I come toward him,
a lean gray witch
through the bullets that enter and dissolve.

I sit in his house
drinking coffee till dawn
and leave as frost reddens on hubcaps,
crawling back into my shadowy body.
All day, asleep in clean grasses,
I dream of the one who could really wound me.
Not with weapons, not with a kiss, not with a look.
Not even with his goodness.

If a man was never to lie to me. Never lie me.
I swear I would never leave him.