Still Life With Decorated Deer Skull, by Angela Sucich

Bone art/mixed media found in vintage store in Wenatchee, WA

Still Life With Decorated Deer Skull
 
The white antlers never painted by nature are shaped more perfectly than an artist could carve. Curved as if to hold, the basket antlers, emptied of fury, now leaf and flower over the frontal roof, glued with red carnations. Blood plumes the vision beside glaucous eucalyptus leaves turned aspen. Gilded discs twist around one moon-white branch. Inside a trove of cheekbone, a geode bares its cluster. Beneath eye sockets, spangled plastic gems fathom the orbits that once saw threats, now dead glam. The recesses appear wise. An animal memento mori foretelling the death bloom, a self-portrait on the wall. Above, a second feathered rack, festooned with fairy lights that fade and flare, pulses with saintly patience. The reliquary so bone close as to be contiguous, an overlay of bejeweled truth that brooks no separation. Let it pull and confound every gaudy day of our lives.

Angela Sucich

Angela Sucich's poems appear in RHINO, Nimrod, SWWIM, Ilanot Review, and elsewhere. She was honourably mentioned for the Pablo Neruda Prize (2021) and Francine Ringold Award (2020). A poet with a PhD in Medieval Literature, Sucich published a chapbook, Illuminated Creatures (Finishing Line Press, 2023), which won the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition. She lives in Leavenworth, Washington, with her husband and daughter.