VINYL POETRY

Volume 5, March 2012

BIRDIE
Justin BoeningView Contributor’s Note

Pig in Steer Country

By sundown, I’d pulled three black bass

and struck them on rocks. I used to have

style: a wicker basket, trout,
a herringbone coat.
In a grizzled autumn,
you told me these

were merely echoes: the falling tree
that took the forest with it,
crisp duff, another

hunter’s moon. I enter the night, a sow
sniffing in the cool,
so the passing leaves

can cling to me for calm,
and you can practice
in the loose
sound of crows,
with your medicine knives.