He has shot at cats that covet oblivious blue jays,
at blue jays ripping wasps’ nests and eating queens,
at beavers building dams with beeches and maples.
He has shot at boys buying bubble gum,
at girls out late in the shadow-dripping pond,
at Yorkies’s yips that shook him from his daydreams.
He has shot at men with flowers and grand plans,
at the postal worker and her peculiar purse,
even at Ed McMahon, big check in hand.
He has shot, so many times, like a can from a rail fence,
Count Chocula off the kitchen island’s faux stone;
the bullet-holes in the green wall now savage stars
from which the shaking children conjure heroes
when they imagine that they are alone.
Header photograph © Ricky Garni.
Andrew teaches British Literature outside of Boston, and has poems appearing or forthcoming in CutBank, Barrow Street, Smartish Pace, Tar River Poetry, The American Journal of Poetry, and RHINO, among others. He lives in Boston with his wife.