A. H. Jerriod Avant’s debut collection is Muscadine (Four Way, 2023). Avant has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and elsewhere. His poems have appeared in the Yale Review, Mississippi Review, Callaloo, Ecotone, Boston Review, and other journals. A recipient of two Winter Fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Avant is currently a Ph.D. English candidate at the University of Rhode Island and a teaching fellow in English at Wesleyan University.
In the house there were always two
white deep freezers packed pretty
decent with red meat. Deer season,
Suppose we were there for some event
we did not want in on or did. Faith flung
so hard, the cage I felt around me was
no cage, just fear, in a summer-long wither;
It is difficult to bark while
the teeth are clinched
so it goes, deep growl
after mean-ass growl
Give me memories as
slow to leave as snails.
In foreign and perhaps
fragile years I’ll still be able
I’m docked at a lake that
the people don’t attend.
Machete on my hip to
make a devil cough up
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