The antelope was ugly. Her face
was ugly, her smell was ugly. Sleeping
in the dining room like a drunk guest,
wife of the deacon of a church, maybe,
who had sipped too many and was snoring it off,
her horns brushing the toes
of the grandfather clock.
Looking up, eyes closed, expecting
stars there and seeing only spackle.

It was Christmas. I had a poem with no name, I had
an antelope asleep by the dining room table. The only
truly beautiful thing about her was her nose,
shiny in the chandlier light. Pushed the front door open
with the nose, I guess, and somehow shut it behind her.

That winter the snow fell dope eye blank
and I could not name the poem. Brown acorns
showed through the ice cracks like nipples
or bare chocolate cake. A pile of Jay feathers,
that blue mystery of bird’s flight, were lover’s noses
peeking in. Our house quieted in the small hours --
I could not name the poem.

She never returned, the antelope. When I rutted
a garden that spring, my rake hit a single shrunken antler
then another. Her horns, not quite human, were frozen
tip to tip as if
she’d been praying for us.