Jake Phillips

 Self-Portrait as Deer Population

When Marissa calls me faggot at age fifteen,
she means that I am a danger to local life,
to flora & fauna. That my presences exceeds
a level of human and social tolerance. Knives

with one sharp edge made curved to skin my hide
because I’m a pest, a safety issue to keep
an eye on. Born in your hometown & defined
invasive. I will damage your property, eat

raw the fresh green-fleshed cukes your garden grew.
I am the white-tailed marauder of the east
coast, rising to greet the sun of every new
and tragic day in your backyard. A repeat

offender— chronic, troubled. He carries bugs,
they say, this human population now
less tolerant of me. They ask I become
a density that satisfies the town’s

best expectations, that I minimize my
overabundance. Can’t get all those results
alone, they think, & prep their magazines
for the recommended, regulated hunt.

Jake Phillips is a queer poet from Rhode Island. He is a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal and was awarded a 2025 scholarship to the Fine Arts Works Center summer workshop and a 2024 Make Art Grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. His poetry is published or forthcoming in AGNI, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, Nimrod, Salt Hill, swamp pink, and elsewhere.