Coon Season

Your gun was as a beam of light in the house; it split the haze of smoke and childhood, scored the jaw of the ceiling into its rows of endless caries festered with the slightest grains of sugary hope The dogs bawled a chorus while you waved it like Hollreiser. I croaked cockatoo quips against the yodeling air turbid with instinct and begging, but the storm slid outside beneath the gapped door. When you left, I sat in place of the dogs and howled against the smoke and night and moon, not being able to forget the song until buckling with sleep to clutch the cool post like some sacred piece of presbyterial iron