Sonnetletter to Mule Deer
1May 27, 2024 by The Citron Review
by Tara Labovich
with roughened coats & blackened
scars you make your bed in the droughtcrackled
grass behind the house, beside the trail worn
with dusty hoof. body heat blends
with dreamshivers : butter
lettuce & small jewels of strawberries
glowing in the curb cracks. everything bursts
in the mouth, coating (for a moment) the night
with watered sweetness. this is taste.
i have been dying to tell you: i want
to be close to her. this ache
for her is a garden i have let fallow.
you deer make your bed in the garden. we go
to sleep, limbs curled into soft o’s that call into the night: oh. oh.
Tara Labovich (they/them) is a writer and teacher. Their multi-genre work explores questions of queerness, survivorship, and multicultural upbringing. In their art and academic writing, they are excited about collaborative poetry and community painting projects. Their work has been published in journals such as Salt Hill and awarded prizes such as the Pearl Hogrefe Award and the Adelaide Bender Reville Prize. You can find them walking their dog in a forest in Iowa.
The Citron Review 
I am unsure if this reaches out and to your Inbox (or some other form of notification), but I find this piece very wonder-driven (and so, would like to comment(!)):
Nature and man are no different; we, just like the Mule Deer. In dreams, we think the same—of better things (or love). And in dream, you had let them go like messengers, or as a simple courier, to know love not only given but received. Is the final crying a realization—of what you may not have? That to go at night and in dark cloth is no better than to go not at all? Perhaps not. Perhaps there is hope in the slept-on grass: the bed you made, to be found and thought of. Perhaps there will even be love returned! (if only in the comfort of the unseen.)
I do not know all meanings behind this (as this is mere speculation!), and it would be—of course—lovely to hear each word’s deliberate symbolism. However, I understand that could never be! Such things are for me and others to see rather than you to tell.
Regardless, this is a sweet work, and I feel you deserve some analysis and response. You have a voice like some other I have read; they, too, are gentle with words and speak of natural things.
Last, congrats on all the awards you have received—I know they were well deserved!