Clay Pigeon 

Back at home, it now seemed, lying
straight to mother’s eyes for the first time
as to whether there’d been any shooting
that weekend in the Poconos
at Uncle Ron’s club, so ulterior-remote,
stocked with buckets for bedpans
the six of us cousins drew straws to see
who would unluckily empty to that clean snow,
and then fireplace-adjacent, the moldering
tower of centerfolds, one dog-eared to
this supine blonde whose baby blues
asked as directly as did uncle aloud
would this make you shoot, which it might
indeed, the new voltage tripped as if
by that one pantry wall switchplate
positioned as the schwing of a cowboy’s
caricature, his hyperbolic bravado
distilling the day’s invitation to swagger--
that that one game quarry I finally
struck, the fracture its distinguishing
song, had rung out superior
to truth’s own bell, before the finger-
point shards into a white still young. 


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