Brianna Noll

Homophonous

To see the fawn is to understand
limerence. Poor suspicious thing,
all legs, sensitive, and feet. Poor
desperate need. To see the faun,
on the other hand, is to understand
circumspection, and the roles
reverse. We have no reason to be
morbid, but we have also seen
the way gunshots tighten perimeters
of fashionable neighborhoods.
Maybe the goat-half flounders,
but what couldn’t the man-half halt
if he so wished? We’re not objective
in our accounts of the mythic,
and our hypochondria is no small part
of this. When we call the doctors
a lot, call them into the frame, we vex
ourselves ambivalent. We ask
what it feels like when your pupils dilate,
unsure if nothing is normal or a sign
something is missing. The faun-anxiety
pens us in, some invisible circle,
and we seek calm fawn-watching
before breakfast. When you see one,
black-green in the distance,
your ribs ache, an acute
desire to press each other tight.