Mary Ruefle / Peek-A-Moose


And I knew somewhere deeply recessed, “away from it all," the real with-it-all took place;
there, in the undulating mists, a moose eating the dark green mosses was barely seen through
the pines, which were repossessed in the animal’s eyebrows (do moose have eyebrows?),
craggy and overhanging like the mist and the moss, and all around him millions upon millions
of other moose lie dead and buried, and no one had ever had a peek of them (though there
were glimpses) and in the glare light of the pizza parlor I chose anchovies which I did not like
but seemed ancient and suffering, such small animals, and I took the pie home with me and
ate it with my mouth gaping, painfully aware I was not a moose and had never been a moose
and would never be a moose, but I had loved you in such an eerie and unnatural way.


CUE:  A Journal of Prose Poetry
Spring / Summer 2005 Issue II, Volume 2