Great Uncle Carl-Christian (b. 1903) With Stag

The fir trunks rise around him like cathedral piers.
Hands in greatcoat pockets, hat brim tipped
to shade his eyes. Vest, collar, tie. The rifle’s
leather band, slung round his shoulder, gleams.
Long Tielsch nose and narrow, handsome face.
Eldest son, set to inherit this land, these trees.
How long still will that future bend to his imagining?
For now, no war mars the horizon. Stretched out
across the frame, the stag lies at his feet. It’s huge.
Five points — or more? Tangled in brush and forest litter,
the rack’s obscured by shade. Underbelly white in sunlight;
down the midsection (far from the heart) a narrow trickle.
That can’t be my father, my aunt says, peers at the photo print.
He’d never make a kill that messy, or pose with it.

ξ

Monika Cassel’s poems and translations from German have recently appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, The Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest, and Zócalo Public Square. Her chapbook Grammar of Passage (flipped eye publishing 2021) won the Venture Poetry Award, and she was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Press inaugural Rhine Translation Prize. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at Warren Wilson College and a teaching artist with Writers in the Schools in Portland, Oregon.