I know there’s not really
bone here, or a mirror 

in which I see a grove―
not my grove, not even a migration 

of eastern elk, the shadows of the stags
that have surfaced behind me for years, for heat 

or protection from wind―no, what I mean 
is I’ve seen nothing 

of the sort. Ground here glazed
in ice, white light cast back in slices, 

the way I jewel myself with pearls. Now frozen,
now field. A gleam diverts the eye. 

An eye on my collar, my wrist, the cleft
of an ear. Still, I 

know this art and where, exactly,
to look. What extends above the snow: thick 

remnants of trees, bone-deep
in frost, a coppice, each pine― 

what is left of the pine―its own ghost.
The face of the stump gazing back, my face 

on its own, my face nebulous, my face soft,
my face in the slick of the ice. No, what I mean is 

I close my eyes, the same way
the butcher’s son does, slicing his first 

cut, still tender, still wary, still listening 
for a voice. The small gap in time 

before he throws the knife. His hands
red, and forlorn, with unease. The suspension of the knife 

grows heavy. Someone says: do it. 
Someone says to him: yield. 

Published June 6th, 2021

Caroline Schmidt is a fictionist, poet, & recent graduate of the Rutgers University-Newark MFA program, where she studied fiction & taught undergraduate creative writing. She has received awards and fellowships from the Beinecke Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, & the Stadler Center for Poetry. Her work is forthcoming in Colorado Review.

Mariana Garibay Raeke is an artist based in Gaudalajara, Mexico, where she was born, and Brooklyn, New York. Raeke earned a BFA from the California College of the Arts and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. Raeke has held residencies at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, Kala Art Institute in California, and Pocoapoco in Mexico. She has recently shown work at Casey Kaplan Gallery in New York, Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta, and La Señora in Oaxaca. More of Raeke’s work can be found through her website.