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The Hunter
Blake Dawson
Naked… brave I am,
skin sleek… black like the sun
red… I am silent wind
like my arrow's true flight
that aims from your heart.
Echoing back from that primal seed,
somewhere in the in-between
Mother Earth and Father Sky
— my lover, my prey, my life —
You whisper to my soul
as I stalk the shadows.
Through my souls I touch You
and You speak to me in tongues
that only fools can know,
that only blind can see:
that silent me who listens… the bridge,
that silent me whose mute senses wake
to the mysterious signs of bark-scraped pines
by velvet tines in shreds and hoof-pawed beds
and the bitter scent of broken sage
and musk oil on wind's breath.
And I know my flesh is out there…
I can sense it… as I sense You,
as I've bled the sweat of His summer sun
as I've touched the blood of Her autumn moon
as I know moss clinging cool
in the blue shadows, damp
in the mist by a stream's bubblings
and babblings, spilling your secrets;
sandy bank fresh-pressed with
the hoof prints of your passage,
elegant like a lady's, like grace, like a
delicate lace kerchief dropped in Your haste.
And I shall retrieve it for You as
I seek You through painful days
of hours, to seasons turning time,
to time as a gift before the moment,
this moment… when
I know You're out there,
out there on the fringe of my senses
caressing me to… anticipation.
Symbiosis:
the hunter and the hunted,
stalking the flesh in life—
your flesh… my life!
And the unknowns,
closer with every snapping twig
like a crack of lightning through
the awareness You are.
And I love You! And I call
for You in my hunger!
In my need I dream
the constrictor's dance,
I sense the snake's romance:
tension… release… tension!… release…
Tighter… just a little tighter…
You are with me now
and I cannot escape my desire for You,
my desire for the moment when at last we face:
windlips brushing Orionic cheeks, senses extended,
reaching like prayer, vividly aware… yet, unaware
of every loose stone pressing for the fall,
of every dry twig longing to cry out to You:
Beware! I am aware
of the blinding sweat screaming love's first touch,
of boy to man… of life to death…
I am aware of only You
as You are One… with me.
Drawing tension… silent death,
bow pulled back… an arch of flame is born
— doorway between now and what will be—
I invite you through…
I invite You to come to me
as I will… surely…
come to You
~ . ~
Leda and the Diplomat
George Dickerson
I do not know what damn rumors you've heard,
But I was neither deity nor bird!
In Manhattan summer dwindled of days,
Itiching in the sweat of my piniped suit,
With briefcase safely snugged under my arm,
I jumped off the bus near Washington Square
And saw her hesitate just steps ahead,
Saw her twice glance back over her shoulder,
As if I might be the sweet predator
She counted on, in this city tricked out
With hankering for anonymous flesh.
So I followed her home across the park,
Negotiated streets and then the stairs
To her narrow bed—not knowing her name.
One cannot always deliberate cause
Or decipher the course of secret needs
In the grapple of groans and pheromones,
In the protocols of woman and man:
Had this quivering girl with light brown eyes
Made a subtle pact with the wanton in me,
Or had I concocted her sad desire?
Loosening her straps, shrugging off her dress,
She was not, as I imagined Leda,
Tentative, dark curls bent in submission
To the whim of an adulterous god;
Ferocious she flared with unfettered heat.
(Call the flame from the jacaranda tree—
For those few moments she was flesh made fire!
And in her eyes I could suddenly see
Lust for empires born and the fall of Troy.)
She uttered a cry I had never heard.
A thoughtful man, I laid my briefcase down.
I spread my wings and tried to be her swan.
~ . ~
Roadkill
Allen C. Fischer
I.
To a crow, the country road
stretches like a long banquet.
There's always something to eat,
some kills fresher than others.
Crows have only to follow traffic
and soon they come upon rabbit,
raccoon, yesterday's cat or squirrel.
And when the pickings are slim,
there's always mashed garbage,
even manure. But you don't see
crows going after big game—
a deer or dog or larger corpse
at the side of the road.
For crows can't be sure whether
the big ones are dead or
just pretending.
II.
Animal stories go down easily at Angie's
Roadside Tavern, where the patrons
circle their trucks on Friday nights.
Here, gun and truck share a place
other men reserve for women.
Angie's crew knows back roads and,
driving as they do, roadkill.
Around the smooth polyurethaned bar,
they talk about near-misses and the one
that didn't get away — the rabid coon
that cut under a man's wheels going 20
in daylight. Only a bungling
brain-snarled beast would do that.
Or a deer in the guile of dusk.
A truck is no trigger tracking a kill.
A truck just is. As a man is.
And so is roadkill. Drunk some night,
a man just doesn't want to become it.
~ . ~
Panther
Maureen Holm
Tucked your claws, Panther,
licked my fresh-mauled limbs,
and foraged down a broadleaf for my unfolding shame.
Stayed until the sun set
to comfort and cajole
with the expressive tail, disaffected yawn
of predator indulged.
Then left me twitching,
safely in the clutches of this jungle-rotted tree,
out of sight, out of earshot
of Good Samaritan, saber-toothed baboons,
newly confident that you'd aroused
enough the bestial in me
that I'd know naturally
to inflict the fatal injury
on myself.
~ .
The Fox and the Ocelot
(verse play: excerpt)
Maureen Holm
. . .
Narrator: Among the fuchsia trusses
of dawning rhododendron,
the swoon of midday firs,
the tootled dusk of whippoorwills,
and the monarch's florabunda hush,
she demonstrated her unhurried skill.
Fox: Fleeter prey I take by ambush,
foraged rewards by plunder.
I take no pride in doggéd pursuit,
no pleasure in a frenzied kill.
Life spills sweetest leisurely
on the tip of my predator tongue.
Narrator: Together, they waylaid rabbits,
looted the stash of squirrels,
robbed the provident, duped the rest,
and grew sleek on cunning and theft.
Patience came hard, but laughter
as naturally as climbing.
She let him fetch down luxuries
beyond her highest bound,
then taught him to suck the fetal savor
from the uncracked shells of starlings. . . .
From the night he brought her the fabled grapes,
he lay wound in her silken scarf.
*
Narrator: Autumn signaled its beginning
with tinted leaf and oblique ray,
the hardened cool of shooting stars,
swaths of purple phlox and goldenrod
amassed at twilight in dappled clearings
among the tufts of unscythed grass,
as camouflage for families
of browsing, lilac deer.
Ocelot: Oh, what singular creatures can these be,
borne upon so tender limb,
who walk not on the earth, but floating,
graze upon its strands of faded green?
Fox: Soft. Watch them close, the game,
which you so fleet now nearly grown,
shall finally stalk and feed upon:
the favored meat of your maturity.
Ocelot: Oh, no, not mine, not me!
'Tis a thing too lovely to be slain
to satisfy a mundane need like hunger.
Fox: No predator concedes advantage to his prey!
Ocelot: Then, in truth, I am unworthy of the name.
For, what disadvantage beauty of the flesh,
if once beheld, it dies to be possessed?
Fox: Did I not promise in this summer interlude
to acquaint you with my skill, and thus,
prepare you for your final challenge?
Now having taught you stealth and guile,
I train your eye upon the proper target
for destruction by your fang and claw,
arrive to see you hunt, not as a fox,
but as the ocelot you are, and you refuse?
Ocelot: Or merely seem to be. For in faith,
if killing be such necessary evil,
but for the beauty of these fragile few
—and of you—I am lost.
Fox: Then I leave you to your scruple
and resume the hollow you have now outgrown.
Narrator: She went home and wept into her silken plume.
~ . ~
Country Life
Nicholas Johnson
The pick-up's got a full tank, a cooler full
of brew, shotgun legal and loaded for bear
but we're not after bear. We're tired of dull
humdrum life but we hum like we don't care.
Life is too much like a country song we say.
Let's go shoot some theories full of holes
or the broadside of a barn. It's OK.
We'll use my barn. It's already full of holes.
Maybe we'll use your theories. They need some
ventilation. Look. We have to let off steam
the best way we can. No, I'm not so dumb
I can't have fun hitting somebody, mean
though it might be, it's the way things are:
hurting someone helps if you don't go too far.
(Prior publ.: The Journal)
~ .
Talking to Strangers
Nicholas Johnson
I know by their looks
the way they carry themselves
like a burden
eyes ringed like the moon
I talk to them
like I talk to myself
I tell them
I walk in the woods
soundlessly
like an Indian, setting
neat prints in the snow
eyeing the squirrels
I tell them I sit
in the snow like a tree stump
how my fingers and toes
drop off one by one
how I count them as they drop
my feelings fall off
like my clothes, silently
snow closing my eyes
I tell them
I have come here
unwanted
wished for like death
that even the rabbit
gnaws off
its paw rather than
be caught in a trap
(Prior publ.: Berkeley Poets Cooperative, as "Them")
~ . ~
Silent Fall
Alexander J. Kochan
I see them early in the morning now
as fog lingers before the sun
whisks it away.
They park the oversized pickup
just off the gravel road
half onto the grass I cut.
They are decked out in
camouflage khakis guaranteed
to make them invisible
except even without my glasses
I know exactly where in the
woods they stand.
They are casing the flock today
eager for tomorrow, guns
and trigger fingers ready.
That will give me time to arrange
the food supply up the hill,
on the other side of the road
so the flock will eat in peace,
guns silent in the arms of
turkey hunters this fall.
~ . ~
Taxidermy
Brant Lyon
I.
Festoons of blood sausage,
T-bones and chops
Arranged in neat rows,
Mounds of honeycomb tripe,
And kidneys discreetly displayed
Off to the side would cheer her
Whenever she looked in the cold case,
More transfixed than she was
As a schoolgirl on class trip
To the Museum of Natural History,
Standing before the diorama of gazelles.
An acquired taste to be sure—
Window-shopping for boar's heads
Or rabbits on meat hooks,
The light snuffed from their eyes—
So far from survival of the fittest
Posed just so behind glass
In the lifelike lifelessness
Of Akeley Hall.
Pyramids of oranges,
Buffed apples and eggplants,
The whole iridescence of produce
Depressed her, she said; or rather
Left her spirit curiously unmoved
On those May afternoons
When her mind naturally turned
To milk-fed veal calves
And the slaughter of spring lambs.
Strange, she thought,
A professor of belles lettres
With a predilection like this.
Not even her ex-husband, the shrink,
Had ever been told
What she came out with
On that park bench in Washington Square.
II.
"This nice weather annoys me.
Barry was nice. I hate nice.
The department's holding off
On my tenure, and my life's
A living hell. These odd appetites
Must come from frustration and nerves,
Don't you think?
I'm glad we can talk this way.
You're like the good son I never had…
Stop by for dinner after class?"
III.
Two beeswax tapers and crisp linen tablecloth,
A lingering look over yet another glass of wine…
Montaigne is overrated; she much prefers
Realpolitik to Proust.
Bluestocking feet kick off their shoes
In search of athletic socks.
She hopes I like wild mushrooms, though
The ones she bought at Jefferson Market
Cannot compare to those she'd gathered
Childhood summers in the Poconos.
The tragic example of an uncle
Had taught her how to differentiate
The merely edible from the intoxicating—
A gently emphatic point she makes,
Her hand cupped over mine,
That seems the sanctimonious prayer
A mantis makes when she clasps her prey.
When the moon was full and the mood was right,
Even Artemis must have had her lapses:
The hour is late, too much to drink,
An apology for the improvidence
Of a guest room or a sofa bed—
She bags her game, and I am led
To the abattoir she calls her boudoir,
To be stuffed and mounted over her mantel—
A show-and-tell trophy for her next at-home,
Except: sub vino sub rosa est.
IV.
The weak light of morning and smell of coffee
Suffuses the room, an outstretched arm
Hovers over the bed, two ibuprofen
In the upturned palm.
~ . ~
St. Hubert and the Stag
Mark Nickels
It was the only way to get his attention.
He would hunt even on Good Friday
in this Ardennes still a rookery
for soil and tree rites, songs, the fading forms
of special pleading.
Not done, this hunting on a feast day, by anyone
modern, observant, a communicant, though he said
I'm back in time for Mass, rushed,
quick, Nostalgie de la bois.
He's a savage, the chrism beading
on the oilcloth of a sweated skin,
wood leopard who loves the wood a little too much
and less the wheat and fences: an animal in silks
and barely tanned leather.
The only way to get his attention
was to rood the antler rack, to peel the fontanel
of a buck, off snuffling in short grass,
and while in an enchantment that stilled it—
let all the grace and white pain in:
backtaste of alien tin in the mouth where
there are sheer white corals for grinding
blackberries, tubers. The buck staggers
with neuron overload, a roar of complexity,
the modem of the Voice implanted like a panzerblitz,
flooding the knobbed, tan gourd of braincase
which tears like a chestnut under the small hand
that just now greenly rose and halted it,
midstride by the birch.
The stag looks puzzled and drugged.
And now a rood there, a cool stem of nausea,
finished velvety like the rack was,
but phosphorized with what was at hand:
gilded with sudden distillate of green swamp muck,
dressed fireflies scraped with the lacquered thumbnail
of some Throne, some Dominion chosen for the purpose
and robed for the day in brown,
for a day a marsh and wood angel,
a sky-sheer tunic thrown away,
the small clear flies drifting down like shavings,
de-shined, the clay, merely.
This is the clay from which miracles are made:
the new time demands that it be of clay,
which is to say the listing funk of the world
from which spirit might be made, with a signaling notch
of anguish for the wild. As miracles are violent
you must expect displacement of the covering brown nap,
and yet another division: what is— by what may be.
~ . ~
The Predator
Ren Powell
There were three guns in the house. Or two guns and a rifle, I guess. That one bruised my shoulder when he had me shoot it in the backyard just so I'd know how to handle it. Just in case I ever needed it. In case I ever had the time to dig the bullets out of his sock drawer and remember how to load the damn thing, before I really needed it. He laughed.
One evening he called me outside to watch him shoot a groundhog or a badger or something big and rodent-like like that, that was hanging around the chicken coop. Just for fun, he said. It was winter and he left it where it fell, in the tangled shrubs that covered the creek. It never really froze solid that winter and I saw the dogs coming back every so often. That spring the dogs raided the mice nests near the creek, and when their stomachs were full, they came into the yard with the squealing, blind things caged between their jaws. And we couldn't do anything but wait. And my mother said that, that just meant there'd be fewer mice in the house come summer.
Once he was sitting in the living room when everyone else was gone, showing me how he cleaned his pistol. Telling me how he wouldn't hesitate to kill anyone who tried get between him and my mother. He'd put a bullet between their eyes without a second thought. But none of that ever really got to me—nothing about the guns ever really got to me.
It was the gigging he did in the summers. After dark in the summers. Leaving the three-pronged spear leaning against the door outside near midnight. Bringing the black trash bag, the big, plastic kind, into the kitchen and leaving it to spasm on the floor. And my mother pressing her hands together, saying, "Oh, God, how I love frog legs. It's good with something wild once in a while."
~ . ~
A Hunting Story
Bertha Rogers
The Saturday hunter meant well.
He meant to kill the jackrabbit
jumping from rotting corn stalks
in the winter-rimed field.
Confused, the old black spaniel
forgot she was a hunting bitch,
became the hunted, the white tail.
She jumped, too.
The bullet from the .22
Got the spaniel clean in the chest.
Her heart's blood burst to snow,
to stalks, to furrows.
She died in slow black circles.
I sat straight on the wooden chair,
comforting the spaniel's daughter
and crying, crying. Linoleum roses
grew red at our feet.
This happened in another time.
In the evenings, when I tell
my city-provincial dogs, they stare,
then run in happy circles and fall,
glad, on the Turkish rug.
~ .
Wildlife
Bertha Rogers
I Meeting
I always had it in my mind to visit the bears in their natural habitat.
I wanted to give them my sandwiches and celery sticks.
On one occasion—it must have been in October, for everything
uplifting has always taken place in October, perhaps because
of the blue leaves gyrating bleached skies, the funereal cries of
gypsies—
three deer, wearing bibs and top hats and little else, sauntered over.
Naturally, I photographed them—they were charming; their blonde
antlers twigging the formidable, brushed beaver; their laughing amber
eyes. Two bears squinted out of the woods; asked, blushing,
if they could be included. Of course, I replied. My plan was to place
them all on the cover of my latest book. I asked around—
Is this appropriate? Will it look good? The bears and deer agreed
to every pose, provided they could have seconds on provisions.
II Losing
I find I am being detained. More important, I can't remember
where the wildlife live. Two men in one body point to a yellow house
on a cliff. I seem to see furred faces in the streaked glass of the dormer
windows. The men are, of course, corrupt—two heads, four legs and
arms—but we all crowd out the door and climb into the waiting
limousine,
my darling daughters in the back with me. Many people are seated
up front, most fondling maps, all giving directions. Then I see them,
in the rear view mirror, the bears—they're waving from an ashy knoll,
the dressed deer rearing up beside them, knocking top hats against
the beeches. They appear to be crying. Though I protest, we drive on.
~ . ~
Uncle Cecil
Scott Simpson
Uncle Cecil lived
on wild game and cigarettes
his arms and legs thin
tough as sinew
I saw him only
when reunions came around
He would stand beside the door
with all the men and talk
of hunting, fishing and of Idaho
until he had to slip outside
behind the trees
to smoke
But Cecil shot his buck alone
this year
before his sons arrived
to find him
where he lay beside the deer
he'd dragged a mile or more
before his heart gave out
I'd like to ask him now
about the woods he walked
about his hours waiting
in the blind
between his sons
how he did it—
sat for hours watching
for the smallest movement
there, against the trunks
two hands on his rifle
never smoking once
I'd like to ask him
more than that
how silence kept between
a father and his sons
huddled in the blind
how that silence
spoke
how that silence
made the choice between
a freezer full of venison
and hunger
how that silence
carves a father's name
into the tender skin
of boys
so that the boys return
year and year again
full stride into manhood
to their father's blind
until they find camp empty
exactly how he left it
and his steady boot tracks
winding off into the trees
~ . ~
Lentils
Pete Wolf Smith
Thus Esau did despise his first-born right.
And what if I did?
The buck, my arrow in his side,
bolted, reeking blood on the wind,
hooves skidding on rocks,
dragging his hind legs along a ridge;
his front legs buckled, and he fell.
I finished him off and slit him down the line
from breast to penis, gutted, and threw the stuff
to the vultures, emissaries of a god
I liked—my own, and not my father's—
and set aside treats for the old one,
kidneys, balls, such as he loved,
the savory bits, and took the kill
on my shoulders and carried it back.
It was late. The roasting would not be done
until coins were flung from the god's bag
across the sky, and the jackal
at the edge of the firelight slunk,
and the moon sang. I came into camp
with the falling sun in my blood
and a subtle iron of springwater on my tongue,
dusty, bloody, the buck hot on my neck.
My brother was squatting at a ring of stones
and a kettle on a little fire
in front of Mother's tent.
He was useless on the hunt, but like a woman
for stews. I told him, Give me some of that,
smelling the wild onions he'd gathered, and the beans;
and offered to beat him, when he refused
and started with his guff about the birthright,
if he continued to be impudent.
But he stirred the red stuff,
and would not hear any word
but birthright, birthright;
and I wanted lentils, bread.
The word he kept repeating—
I didn't know what it meant.
(Third-place winner, LyR, 2002)
~ . ~
On the Road to Rose Blanche
Gyorgyi Voros
(excerpt)
Newfoundland
2.
We were sleeping in the truck in a cul-de-sac.
Night ripped
with engine whine, tire screech, rat-tat
of spat gravel.
Amid hellion hooting and howling, the pickup
careened into the lot.
The terrifying rowdiness was that (we thought)
of drunk hunters—
the kind who fuck the deer before dismembering it.
But they were
only kids, reckless with the recklessness afforded by
the world's unraveling
seamedge, graygreen blueskied garment soon
enough discarded
(as might be a spoiled deer carcass,
done with,
flown). Rattled, we demanded of them
nothing (with a sigh)
but greeting. And they (they said "Eh?")
were amazed
to hear from where and how far we had come.
"To this 'ole?" They hung
from the cab, the girls like greening tendrils,
the boys like small
explosives. Soon,
we slept again.
(Semifinalist, LyR, 2002)
~ . ~
Hunt
Amanda Yskamp
If hunting is what you're after.
If hunger leads you to hunt.
If I'm a deer with a heart in my throat.
If my fine legs and willing white rump
are willing are white or fine.
If scent is faithful to its source.
If only this can unite us.
I am in the break, trembling,
true to my blood. Here,
I'll hand you the rifle.
a thermos for the cold wait,
the taxidermist's jars,
a bonesaw for venison cuts.
I am in the flick of your lash,
a print of the forest in stipple.
Behind me the trees
aren't trees but a pleating of air,
silver, green, unbreathed. Before me
what was the stillness for you
but a waiting for my rapt thrall,
my side-to-side and fleet gait
that leaves
the clearing in its living pause.
And you could not afterwards—
with my hooves lashed together,
slung on your shoulder, my limp head
nodding "yes, yes," against your thigh—
alter, describe (what good
was I to you now,
scattered to use?) or keep
what first had set you on my trail.
(Prior publ.: Rattapallax)
~ . ~ . ~
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