I'd like to read a couple of poems
also from this collection that's from a series
that I've been doing also, Hunting Poems.
I don't know how y'all do here in Tucson.
But I suspect there's hunters in Tucson.
Anyway, hunting is a weird thing.
It's very difficult for me, being part Native American,
to condemn hunting outright.
Because there is a relationship there.
But at the same time, I wouldn't want to do it.
Anyway, these are a series of love poems to a hunter.
And the first one is "Buckshot."
And it begins with an old Irish folk song, the lyrics
from an old Irish folk song.
"For now it is September, and the killing has begun."
"Buckshot."
"My man wants to kill.
He longs to shoot his guns into the air
sacs of still steaming breath.
He tries to heave himself into the site and narrow anger
into a new dimension.
My Love wants to stun the living daylights out of creation,
hang the dead rough in keening wind,
and break the wings as rigor mortis sheds
the feathers easily into his fine and slender hands.
In the season of the dark spill, I see him shiver on the reel
and feel his dog's tense happiness, smell the blood
spore of his wolf and hair matted and close as after sex.
His toes are cold as bullets in the blind.
The siren of his eyes is taut as catgut as he waits.
My sullen angler performs his task
with the tension all his own as if in sleep.
His murmured smell of breath escapes the life of smoke
within the mist.
He gives the added slack, pulls the line
in sentences in the Morse code of fish,
a diddled dance of prey.
He settles for my cold blood but counts the night
before his holiday of death."