ego death with skeet shooting

by Jay Aelick

the downy vines make of us willing captives:
couple us to the soybeans:                     blossoms
Pollacking        the field: pure motion:   moths
stir the air’s familiar broth:
then the shotgun
licks its upper lip:                     liberates
a shell that bursts into live cicada:
then thunder     hollers
from behind the tree line:          call:      :response
blue jays croak a hymn
like a rocker against porchwood:
haint blue:        there’s a grave on the hill
but it doesn’t move:      content
to keep its distance:
dragonflies remember long-ago verses:
etch their letters between the rows of sorghum:
come:   sit         with us:
taste the storm simmering inside everything\
that calls itself a part of this place:
toss a red clay pigeon
just to watch it fly: disappear\
into all that green

Jay Aelick is a nonbinary writer and critic who makes up 1/2 of the SBU English Club Podcast, where real critique partners at a fake university workshop the internet's most infamous books. They hold an MFA from North Carolina State University and are a former Fulbright Austria Teaching Assistant and fellow of German Literary Institutions: The Berlin Seminar (GLIB).