PRISM: The Velvet Phase

PRISM is a storytelling series amplifying the experiences, creativity, and imagination of Black, Brown, and Indigenous storytellers based in Kentucky.

I heard it first, in the dark: an otherworldly squealing, high-pitched and sometimes close to sweet. Was it some kind of alien insect screeching, sending transmissions to listeners off-planet? UFOs love New Mexico, I was told soon after I dropped off my one-way Avis rental in the Land of Enchantment. At the time, I didn’t believe in aliens. What was also true is that I didn’t not believe in them. This wandering Kentuckian was just intrigued. One thing was certain: I couldn’t place this piccolo. If it wasn’t a Martian flute, what was it? 

As it turns out, the provenance of the night-time calls was nearer to earth. I learned that they came from bull elk, who bugle as part of their mating rituals and more. What I heard was an artifact of yearning, a noctuary of need–the sound of elk scrawling their desire onto the night. It didn’t take long for me to start humming along to their songs–I had my longings, too. 

I have since moved away from the state of turquoise and sunset, away from my comrades calling out in the wilderness. But I still keep a gifted elk antler as a memento, an echo I can hold. Branching, sinuous, mysterious–the half rack of the unknown bull looks like how bugling sounds. It looks like a relic from ancient rutting wars; one of its points is pocked while the crown appears gnawed, battered. But the beam is smooth, growing more ridged and textured near the burr. Here the bone flutes out, froths even–as whimsical as the rest of the antler is severe and unforgiving. Judging from its size, the original owner was likely no more than 2.5 years old. Still young, but apparently already having had his powers tested. The antler is battle-scarred, like me. Maybe that’s why it’s accompanied me through several cross-country moves and years of housing insecurity. While many of my other belongings remain in storage, my elk antennae boast pride of place in my current home. I’ve been planning on mounting it above the door in my studio, but that would mean giving up touching it whenever the urge strikes. It sits atop one of my bookshelves, bearing stories of its own. Its heft holds me. Who knew that this sculpture of borrowed bone would give me some kind of spine?

Admittedly I am materialistic in the most primal sense (Picture the crab claws, rocks, turkey bones, feathers, crystals, acorns, and shards of bark I keep in my lair.). But the antler carries heavier, more sentimental weight. Once it adorned a bull who had roamed through my old stomping grounds in northern New Mexico. More modest than a town or a village, the unincorporated community of 80 people did have a small general store, its sole commercial establishment. That’s where Tim rang up my purchases, and blurted out to me one day: “You know, there’s more animals here than people.” That fact was readily witnessed, although I counted myself animal among the elk, bears, wild turkeys, owls, coyotes, and other wild ones around us. What was also true and just as evident was that I was outnumbered in more ways than one. A friend of mine in Albuquerque advised me to stay mum about being queer because what if I was the only one? But it was still obvious that I was the only Black resident in this hamlet nestled in the Southern Rockies. According to Juan, my neighbor–and the unofficial area historian–there hadn’t been any Black people living there for over 40 years. In the 1960s, Black folks from Arkansas moved to Rio Arriba County to work in the timber industry. But they were long gone when I showed up almost two decades ago at this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it spot off U.S. 84. 

So why was I there? Because misty-eyed me found and answered a classified ad while living on the East Coast, an ad that seemed to be the gateway to a long-held dream: to write and live the bucolic life. In exchange for keeping an eye on the 40-acre property, taking care of a couple cats, and gardening, I would get discounted rent on a casita at the edge of Carson National Forest. My starving artist’s budget couldn’t resist so I moved to terra incognita, despite my trepidation about living alone so far out. I had grown up in suburban Louisville in a majority-Black neighborhood, where my rural-raised father complained about how close the houses were to each other. At the casita I couldn’t even see another house from any of my windows. How would I feel safe enough to sleep at night?

I needn’t have worried. The only thing that punctured my bedtime bubble was the lovelorn call of the elk. Coming home from Taos late one night, a bull sauntered across the narrow mountain road in front of my car, no more surprised to see me than the falling snow. This was not the case when I showed up in the community meeting hall to vote. The other residents–all Latino, with generations-long roots in the area–did try to stare as discreetly as they could though.

Being the stranger didn’t mean I wasn’t the beneficiary of breath-catching kindness, however. A reclusive neighbor–whose grouchiness I had been warned about–dropped by with a welcome basket of duck eggs and tomatoes. (I haven’t had tastier tomatoes since.) When black ice launched my car into a ditch, people I didn’t know pulled me out. Juan told me that the local tradition was to keep houses unlocked just in case a stranger needed quick shelter in a snowstorm. It snowed so much one winter that I didn’t spy bare ground from late November to April, and through it all an anonymous neighbor came by and plowed my long gravel driveway. Although I have my guesses, I never discovered the identity of the angel snow-clearer. I had to leave before I had the chance to bake that hero some chocolate-chip cookies, at the very least. To say, with tears caged in throat: thank you.

Then there was Mel. He repaired my prehistoric jalopy several times for peanuts, and refused to accept more. Once he left his very new, very expensive truck in front of my casita before heading back to his shop in my near-useless vehicle. With a shrug, he said: “Well, you need some wheels while I work on your car. What if you have to go to the store?” To him, it was no big deal. But after all this time I am still overcome.

The almost-town appears only on New Mexico maps capturing the most atomic; a pinprick of a place that continues to score my heart, like the topmost tip of my antler-gift. In part because my time there still feels too brief, my goodbye rushed. I had to move away quickly because I had to have big-city support for a rapidly worsening condition. 

Before I left, I informed the postmistress of the stamp-sized post office. She asked haltingly, “No one was…unkind to you, were they?”  The way she soldiered through the asking, putting her concern for me before her discomfort, touches me even now. No, no one was unkind to me. When Mel learned of my imminent departure, he knocked on my door, present in hand. The antler. “So you won’t forget us,” he explained. As if.

Just-sprouting antlers are coated in velvet, or a downy “skin.” It’s a blood-warm, nutrient-rich cover for developing bone. A soft sanctuary for what is growing. Eventually the velvet phase gives way to velvet shedding and antler hardening. The antler in my arms is what remains. They say nothing gold can stay. And apparently, nothing velvet can either.

 

All names have been changed.

 

 

Almah LaVon is a mixed media artist and writer whose work has appeared in The Louisville Anthology (Belt Publishing) and many other outlets. Their queer speculative novella is forthcoming in 2026. Theyy were born and bled in Kentucky but remember their former life as a cloud wandering above the high mountain desert. Theyy are still levitating.

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https://www.almahlavonrice.com/contact

 

IG: agentsubrosa