In America we, that is to say boys,
Stick firecrackers up the asses of cats or
Bury them up to their narrow necks out back.
You either lubricate the colored wrapper
Or tamp the dirt so it can't dig free. Then the
Lawnmower combusts the pulse out of the breeze
Or the lit fuse quickly spits its pins and - poom -
The cat's back blurs terribly, goes bloody and
Gray, becomes a thing the cat can barely drag
Away with what is left of itself to die.
American boys do this once or maybe
Witness it some Summer's trip to a cousin's
Up state. Or the spinning blade's thrack, tightened eyes
And instinctive hiss, ears pulled back, tail as black
As snake on a forest floor are all just junk
We've had to hear to learn our cruel folklore.

For a time there was a nasty magazine
That Kurt had taken from his father's camper
And kept beneath a log where Hollow Rock dropped
Its forehead into Sandy's Branch. We were not
To touch it unless Kurt was there, but how could
He stop us? At first the glossy pages grew
Heavy and damp, wavy as the grayish lips
Under the flesh-like caps of the fungus fixed
Against the trees. The color photographs were
Orange and naked, the colors of the things we
Spread and pricked and prodded in the summer woods.
Then the magazine began to mold, darken
And separate, so that each woman could be
Pulled as thin as tissue from her page. We'd drape
Them on our fingers, kneel by the bank, and let
The creek lift the skin and take them off our hands.

I wanted the glass flask Rod Reitzel kept hid
In a mud hole somewhere past the last row
Of homes where dirt mounds—packed down from dirt bikes—were Piled, riddled with broken sandstone and sharp
Slices of shale. I'd heard his puddle was near
The far end where the woods had barely begun
To whisker back with poke and thorn. Maybe I
Would only nudge the clear neck and screw cap with
A stick, lift it to the light to see where the
Level grinned against the glass. Maybe I would
Smash it, stomp the pieces in the mud-Rod'd
Choked me once for nothing, held me by the neck,
Squeezed my throat until his face filled with blood and
My legs gave out-, so maybe I would just drink
It, that watered gin, hocker, piss, whatever
Would stink in my mouth and make me strong as him.

It's not hard. You squeeze it by the chest and let
Her crack its head with a hammer, then you grip
Its loose skin while she opens up its neck. Next
You hang it from its cocked hind legs and let it
Bleed. The rest is making lines, mathematically
Knifing off the coat, plopping the glazy guts
Into five gallon buckets, gluey odor
Inside the rabbit sticking against your throat.
The butchering done, Margaret's mom sent us
To the barn, to the hogs' pen, where Margaret
Tossed the bucketfuls to the boars. In that warm,
Dim air her hands—Margaret was part Indian,
Red haired, soft, and thin (whatever her father
Was, was something different, Hardshell Baptist,
Holiness, Naz'rene) —her hands glistened. Her wet
Skin a skin I wanted to have to need me.