Hunting Season / kate meadows

Hunting Season

There’s a skinny boy in tall grass. A rifle crack in dull dusk. The bounds of the trees pull back, wary of bare shoulder blades and bug-bitten rib cage— of what harshness they may contain. Night-sounds thrum and hiss their caution. The silhouette stumbles on, lungs raw from rabbit chase. Face tilted back, illiterate to stars. A little drunk off moonshine and bloodrage.

In the woods, there’s a white doe hidden beneath laurel shade. The brambles misconstrue those ancestral words carved into diamond breastplate: Noli me tangere. Split-hooves shuffle: cannot hide, cannot escape. Eyes cut wide with flashlight blade. Leather boots crunch over littered glass, cigarette ash. Dog teeth gnash. Rifle crack. Once, then

Twice. There’s a mess of animal in the bluestem and wild rye. A cluster of broken blood vessels below the collarbone, a knick on the inner thigh— flesh wounds never seen, never acknowledged. The grass will hold the gore instead. Only the head, still unsullied white, a piece for the wall. Nailed between other braggish bounties, among other quiet objects.