Cassandra de Alba‘s “A deer with the head of Emily Dickinson”— one of three deliciously eerie poems she contributed to our Winter 2015 issue— is about a deer with the head of Emily Dickinson.

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A DEER WITH THE HEAD OF EMILY DICKINSON
has been spotted all over town:
hugging the edge of the forest,
standing fog-shrouded in post-midnight
parking lots, up to its knees
in the river’s slow swirl.
The thing about the deer
with the head of Emily Dickinson
is that no one has ever seen her move –
she is never seen coming or going,
never leaping across the road
like the hundred of deer-headed deer
who haunt our forests –
the deer with the head of Emily Dickinson
is always standing there, stone-still
in the middle distance,
for as long as you care to look.

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CASSANDRA de ALBA‘s work has appeared in Skydeer Helpking, The Nervous Breakdown, and Vector Press, among other places. She is a grad student in the greater Boston area and can be found online at outsidewarmafghans.tumblr.com.