Drucilla Wall, assistant teaching professor of English at UMSL, wrote "Deer Woman at Fifty," the Free Verse poem pick for January by the St. Louis Beacon and River Styx.

Drucilla Wall’s poem “Deer Woman at Fifty” prompted an observation and query from Richard Newman, editor of the St. Louis-based literary magazine River Styx.

“For the doe in the poem, hunting season ended well before middle age,” Newman wrote in the St. Louis Beacon. “Who is predator and who prey – or are we both at the same time?”

“Deer Woman at Fifty” was selected for the January edition of Free Verse, a monthly poetry selection published in the St. Louis Beacon in collaboration with River Styx. Wall, assistant teaching professor of English at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, originally published the poem in “The Geese at the Gates,” her first poetry collection.

Click here to read Wall’s poem via the St. Louis Beacon.