Reviews:

• A review by Sonja James in The Journal
• A review by Laura Dukes in The Frederick News-Post

“Susan Gordon’s extraordinary language conveys us through death to dissolution and transfiguration, as she bears careful, caring witness to the body of a belly-shot doe day after day, week after week, month after month, through all seasons of the weather and the soul.  Time and again precis description breaks open into transcendent vision; beauty entwines with horror, both driving towards the ‘unraveling / of what comes / after everything has been undone.’  This is a masterpiece, a poem I will cherish and revisit for many years.”

—Jo Radner, Professor of Literature Emerita, American University, and Storyteller

Susan's Web Site: susangordonstories.com

Excerpt from
There Is a Doe in the Winter Hayfield

I have been hearing the exploding cracks 
of rifle shots from the long, empty farm behind mine

I don’t know those hunters 
but I know their signs 
I find molasses and corn in August  
left out to call the velvet-antlered buck into ambush 
I find beer cans and orange peels  
as the raw dark of hunting season sets in

There is a doe in the winter hay field

I allow a hunter here, Nick, 
a bow-hunter, quiet, waiting 
quick to follow if he has wounded

He has never left a deer behind

There is a doe in the winter hay field

Belly shot 
she died running 
her legs outstretched 
stilled mid-gallop 
She died in extremity 
in flight

There is a doe in the winter hay field

She is close to whole  
her skyward eye plucked 
one ear torn 
Other than that, she is 
a sweet-faced beauty 
with a long white throat and a dark nose

There is a doe in the winter hay field