Until you pulled
the trigger you
knew nothing
of wild boars
except tales
your father told
you as a child,
but suddenly
there it was
fierce and feral,
yellowed tusks
flying at you—
the tall novitiate.
So when you
raised the rifle
to your eye
and fired,
your mastery
of boars burst
over African
grassland,
splattered
in a grisly shower
of comprehension:
red words
splashed
on knee-high grass,
paragraphs hashed
out in final breaths,
until the depleted
subject of your study—
tumescent body
and stiff squat legs—
lay dead in African
savanna, the obsolete
entry you never read
in your Encyclopedia Britannica.
Nov 8, 2016
Nov 8, 2016 at 11:15 AM UTC
Until you pulled
the trigger you
knew nothing
of wild boars
except tales
your father told
you as a child,
but suddenly
there it was
fierce and feral,
yellowed tusks
flying at you—
the tall novitiate.
So when you
raised the rifle
to your eye
and fired,
your mastery
of boars burst
over African
grassland,
splattered
in a grisly shower
of comprehension:
red words
splashed
on knee-high grass,
paragraphs hashed
out in final breaths,
until the depleted
subject of your study—
tumescent body
and stiff squat legs—
lay dead in African
savanna, the obsolete
entry you never read
in your Encyclopedia Britannica.
