Two Poems, by Larry D. Thacker

License

I got a fishing license this morning. It’s good

for small game besides fish–coyote, beaver,

skunks, and groundhogs allowed year around.

A varmint is a problem beast, a nuisance, they

say, whose extermination is encouraged, an invasive

vermin offering potential guiltless pleasure hunting.

The last time I went hunting I killed a groundhog

with a .410 shotgun, perhaps the most inefficient

way to take a one, but I wanted a challenge.

I stalked the cow pasture, spying the quick starts

and stops of attentive movement, the rising heads,

trying to estimate the animals’ stations of dens

across the field, watching them enter before

creeping a few feet closer, a statue when one would

pop up from another backdoor hole, freezing,

moving again, closer. We danced like this for half

an hour until I was only fifteen feet from an entry,

sitting cross-legged in green and brown, waiting

for the groundhog’s boredom to tempt it. I made

a noise. Why would anything be out here to hurt it?

A slow head popped up, then the torso half way

higher to see better, hindquarters stance of curiosity,

nose tilted up, I imagine smelling breakfast, cigarette

smoke on my breath as I exhaled partly and held,

offering the soft squeeze and explosion of shot

peppering up the instant flecks of dirt and blood,

no movement then but the puff of dust vanishing.

I heard the whining belly full of babies before

pulling her out of her hole. I verged on a panic

threatening to rush me from the field with a cry

of absolute shame. But I forced myself to stand

over her body until all was finally quiet, the stretched

womb grown still. Then I snapped the stock off

my shotgun with one strike on a stone and tossed

the weapon in the hole, toed the body in over my

surrendered gun, nudged the berm of dirt over it all.

You asked for it

God should be so kind,

and God should be so cruel,

as to grant you the exact god

you think you know, the god

you believe you and others deserve,

the perverted version of justice

you daydream about all day

while Fox News and talk radio

screams weirdness in the background.

You would realize that what

you thought you desired

was actually an unexpected hell,

strangely rendered by your own hand,

a terrible disappointment on top

of the hill, after that steep climb

of anxiety with your son’s hand

in yours, the altar you work on

all night rendered suddenly

useless at the moment of truth,

or a sort of purgatory where

you are made into a rope pulled

by two versions of yourself,

one the victim of your wants,

the other, the guilty judge.

Larry D. Thacker’s poetry can be found in or is forthcoming in journals and magazines such as The Still Journal, The Southern Poetry Anthology: Tennessee, Harpoon Review, Rappahannock Review, Silver Birch Press, Delaware Poetry Review, AvantAppal(Achia), Sick Lit Magazine, Black Napkin Press, and Appalachian Heritage. His stories can be found in past issues of The Still Journal, Dime Show Review and The Emancipator.

He is the author of Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia, the poetry chapbooks Voice Hunting and Memory Train, and the forthcoming full collection, Drifting in Awe. He is now engaged full-time in his poetry/fiction MFA from West Virginia Wesleyan College. www.larrydthacker.com