back CLAUDIA EMERSON
Acre
You should know better than to rent that acre
alongside the river to those boys you know
will plant it in corn only to cut it right before
hunting season so that the whole week it’s lying there:
stalks and sweet ears and tassels by the water the deer
already have made slick paths to, the field
drawing them bolder and bolder to it as something
natural, a given. But hasn’t Claude placed a rabbit trap
long and narrow in a similar fashion? True.
The difference is when you’ve proved you can lead
something with a .22 and kill it without a thought.
That’s how you earn the trap, when you can foretell
that kind of zag and not sit lazy up in a tree
looking down on that one fertile field you still think you have rights to.
Acre
Ghost-Road
Rabbit
Rabies
Razor
Seed