Jesus with a joke rifle. Cockiness before the cannonade.
Do we feel better after? Feel
which way? Aren’t we

the hard of hearing, who discharge
so many rounds of laughter?
Are we not ridden with it – riddled with it –

friendly fire? Thank God we doze
a couple hundred hours a month
and dozens of those

add up, to make a life,
a counterpoise. (But all or nothings
wear us out. Respire, expire, you learn

more than you earn.) The old gold
is regret – the shooter and the shot
are kissing cousins. Lure

the third thing into play, my boys.
Otherwise (active or passive,
wired or winging, live or live) something

escapes us – rarest of birds – our
buckshot evanescence. There it is! –
in every fray of oppositions – singing thirds.

 

 

 

 

HEATHER MCHUGH was born in 1948 in California and grew up in Virginia. Her most recent collection is Eyeshot (Wesleyan University Press, 2003). She teaches at the University of Washington in Seattle.

 

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