Gassing the woodchucks didn't turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.
Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course
and then took over the vegetable patch
nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots.
The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling
to the feel of the .22, the bullets' neat noses.
I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace
puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing,
now drew a bead on the little woodchuck's face.
He died down in the ever bearing roses.
Ten minutes later I dropped the mother. She
flip-flopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth
still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.
Another baby next. O one-two-three
the murderer inside me rose up hard,
the Hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith.
There's one chuck left. Old wily fellow, he keeps
me cocked and ready day after day after day.
All night I hunt his humped-up form. I dream
I sight along the barrel in my sleep.
If only they'd all consented to die unseen
gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.
Hitting my brother didn’t turn out right
I chose a room away from mom
So she wouldn’t notice what I was doing,
And I made sure the room was empty,
Father and mother in the kitchen,
But the soda was in the pantry.
As I swung my arm back, I heard a click.
I heard my dad ask for the soda,
When he decided to get it himself.
My brother told and started on
How I had tried to hit him.
He ran through the house screaming my crime.
I thought of my options, which were few, and scarce
I could have said sorry and gone to my room,
I could have denied the bubbling truth,
spilling through my eyes and hair.
As I looked into my brothers sneering face
I rose my hand and struck.
My mother ran in at the sound of his scream
She saw his little body on the floor
I saw my father, his face in shame
I ran pushed them away and ran.
I ran to the woods until I could run no more.
I don’t know what compelled me to do it.
By: Maxine Kumin
By: Victoria "Maggie" Jones
They are weighing the babies again on color television.
They are hanging these small bags of bones up in canvas slings
To determine which ones will receive the dried-milk mush,
The concentrate made out of ground-up trash fish.
For years we have watched them, back-lit by the desert,
These miles of dusty hands holding out goatskins or cups,
Their animals dead or dying of rinderpest,
And after the credits come up I continue to sit
Through Dinner with Julia, where, in a French fish
Poacher big enough for a small brown baby, and
Alaska salmon simmer in a court bouillon.
For a first course, steak tartare to awaken the palate
With it Julia suggests a zinfandel. This scene
Has a polite, a touristy flavor to it,
And I let it play, but somewhere Oxfam goes on
Spooning gluey gruel between the parched lips
Of potbellied children, the ones whom perhaps can be saved
From kwashiorkor-and ancient Ghanaian word-
Though with probable lowered IQs, the voiceover explains,
Caused by protein deficiencies linked to the drought
And the drought has grown worse with the gradual increase in herds
Overgrazing the thin forage grasses of the Sahel.
This, says the voice, can be laid to the natural greed
Of the nomad deceived by technicians digging the new wells
Which means (a slow pan of the sand) that the water table has dropped
And now to Julia’s table is borne the resplendent fish.
Always the camera is angled so that the guests look up.
Among them I glimpse that sly Dean, Jonathan Swift.
After the credits come up I continue to sit
With those who are starving to death in a distant nation
Squatting, back-lit by the desert, hands out, in my head
And the Dublin Dean squats there too, observing the population
That waits for the too little dried milk, white rice, trash fish.
Always the camera is angled so they look up
While their babies are weighed in slings on color television,
Look into our living rooms and the shaded rooms we sleep in.
They are discussing the gossip on the radio
They are calling listeners to see what is enjoyed,
To know what seems hot to their listeners' minds,
Minds meant for discovery and learning.
For years we have listened, sitting in a chair eating chips.
These voices of boredom covered up by mock laughter,
Their news is old like a popsicle sitting out in the sun,
While it sits there and melts, we listen on
We listen to the voices on and on
He tells how a pop star was seen on a date
Or jokes of how kids in Africa, with there burnt backs
Never wear clothes or look the way we do.
I listen to the new music, I begin to think
Of begging children, who barely have food.
Their lives are passing through the sky like shooting stars
We sit and watch for entertainment or something to talk about.
We could listen to these children’s calls of help through dry thirsty
throats,
Instead we wait to hear the radio, to see who is #1,
Like these children wait for there next meal,
The announcer calls “JaRule hits #1” and we listen on.
