Deer Hit

“Deer Hit” consists of couplet stanzas in two sections, with an extra line single line ending each section. Irregular iambic pentameter structures the lines, with several instances of inverted feet and catalexis.

The lines mostly avoid end rhyme, but internal rhyme and alliterative patterns knit the poem together sonically. Lines like “stamp both feet on the brake, skid and jolt” (Line 8) with its envelope alliteration and “frantic circle, front legs scrambling” (Line 16) with cross alliteration provide a lighter acoustic unity than full rhyme but give the lines a subtle musicality. Assonance also stands in for rhyme, pulling together passages like “You watch for a while. It tires, lies still” (Line 19).

Part 2 runs about thirty percent shorter than Part 1, further suggesting the break in the poem represents a kind of intermission, as in a movie or play. The total number of Lines--52—suggests a deck of cards: a tool of risk and fate, often in the hands of gangsters and magicians.

Loomis’s haunting synecdoche in the poems’ sixth line, the “road full of eyeballs” that stands in for the clump of