Apparition of Clay Pigeons 

Home again, preparing to lie straight
to mother’s face for the first time
as to whether any of the boys have been
shooting this past weekend in the Poconos
at Uncle Ron’s hunt club, so ulterior-remote,
stocked with buckets for bedpans
five cousins and I drew straws to see
who’d unluckily empty to that fresh-fallen snow,
and fireplace-adjacent, the club’s moldering
tower of centerfolds, one dog-eared upon
the supine blonde whose baby blues
asked as directly as my uncle did aloud,
would this make you shoot—no: but what
might—a new voltage tripped by
this cabin’s light switch, positioned
to flip up the schwing on a cowboy’s
caricature, hands on his hips, all libido-
bravado, a distillation of the weekend’s
invitation to swagger—I could answer
no: no shooting, Mom, letting a lie
fly straight off the tongue, like each
featherless clay bird, of a species
newly discerned, with fracture
the identifying song.


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