In the waiting room, the taste of disinfectant blooms
blue on my tongue. My father dreams like a fig wasp

inside his paper hospital gown. A clear nasal cannula
loops his ear—cursive I can’t read, or want to. I turn

away to sleep, wake up with the TV on. It’s the news:
a ring of camouflaged hunters surrounds a trembling

stag through snow that cuts like sheet cake. The stag
has fur growing out its eyes. If there is a lesson here,
I refuse to learn it. January thinned the deer this year,

and there’s sickness in the birch. Crow nests pulse
with winter rain. Sky a hammer of frostbitten stars.