Open Season.
by Donna Kane

He tells me there's nothing worse than to bag your deer
the first day of hunting, have to hang up your bow for another year,
says he'd rather keep that tension and excitement
much like Christmas Eve or the brink of orgasm.
If he knew this was going to be a poem, he might have said
it's the getting outside that counts, to feel the woods
inside him, the hunt insignificant to the great outdoors,
and hell, if he never killed a thing it wouldn't matter,
but wants it because he's never learned to use a camera,
that racks don't matter, they can be uneven or even deformed,
but not
that there's a thrill in being so close he could touch it
but whispers instead, "ok asshole, I'm going to kill you," and notes
the animal accepts it better at a
foot than at a hundred feet away.