I was fifteen,
Jersey boy, displaced
from green suburbia
to a sagebrush sea.

I tried to drop my accent,
got a job at a horse ranch
shoveling ****,
wore cowboy boots.

Finally made a friend
in that dirt road valley,
taught me to sideways slide
and countersteer,
joyriding his mother's car
down rough roads
we shouldn’t be on,
sparks flying,
rocks bouncing
off the undercarriage.

And he had guns too,
pistols and rifles.
We hiked up into the hills,
shot at rusty
abandoned cars,
empty beer cans
or anything
that crawled
slithered or hopped.

Killing that jackrabbit
was a lucky shot.
I got him right through the eye
with a 22, on the fly,
just for fun.

We laughed
and high fived
as that black crater
in his head
did not stare at us
from the dusty ground.

I was in.