I take my rifle for a walk in the woods.
Dark and deep and all that shit
but, most importantly, relief
from the gravel-dragged voices of men.
            No, not silent—it teems.

            The magpies yip like broads in a kitchen,
acupuncturing h'orderves with toothpicks.
Mice must’ve feasted on Timmy’s at the dump.
And the owls over-caffeinated on their blood,
             are ‘who-who-ing’ at brunch.

            The chipmunk shivers its tail like a rattler.
Have they ever been x-rayed? What’s in there?
Beavers wear Isotoners, like O.J.,
punch the surface tension
            with their upper-body centre of gravity.     
                                                                                                                   
            Dead actors were once impaled in the heart
and buried at a crossroads,
because they embodied characters
too effectively. “They.” Eternal affection for
            scare quotes.  The deer’s chitosan

            metabolism is admirable. The forest’s
flocked Slender Man. And gone,
my dad, who I buried by hand,
shovel by shovel—
            I see the silhouette of a buck

            but can’t aim;
I’m far-sighted in one eye, near-sighted
in the other. I don’t like to brag,
but one eye’s Brueghel,
            one’s Picasso.