Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsSpring 2016  Vol. 15 No. 1
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an online journal of literature and the arts
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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.  


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