If a wdchuck cd chuck
We took the truck out at eleven. Me, sean, loving the dump-trip
almost as much as fishing, little limbs apiston w/ excitement,
and my Dad, bad Bobby Mo, after an out late-nite,
cheeked red by beer, cheerful grin but beat-tired eyes.
In the punchy battered flatbed
Little passenger gasping laughter
Rattled and rocked down the crushed-mud,
tractor-ruptured cowpath, cracked
Peaks and ruts of wet crap, black sludge.
The shovel and pitchfork sat in the back Dad
used to pick up dead water rats, farmcats (often
swallowed by the landscape, turning up later in rank
pastoral studies, flystruck anatomies I could stare at for hours.)
Or the fork could be used for rabbits, or groundhogs or occasional coons.
(I knew from school or somewhere even at nine that meant black
persons sometimes too, which didn’t make sense
since coons were gray and white with just little
black theatrical masks - but anyway, not in this case)
No black persons lived in Inverary, Sunbury or Battersea. None
went to Storrington skool with me either until one kid (round
smily guy in a cammo ballcap name was maybe ryan) came
two years later. My dad had a blue ballcap. Bluejays. Saw those birds
Here, more often in winter. Cap colours were like headdress-feathers
For warring Indian tribes of my ten year old mind, dirty white like
A treasure map dug from the cobwebbed crawlspace.
My dad had thick trunks for arms, from lifting fridges
And concrete blocks and swinging baseball bats and rasslin
Assholes who had it coming. I jerked fwd as his right foot slammed
stopping the truck shudder, dead, in its tracks. Dad leapt out of the cab.
I looked around supercharged with excite alarms and saw the waddling form,
ambling rapid for its hole. Dad snatched up the shovel in one swoop
blur of movement, heard it wiz
Whistle heard the
Bolting ‘hog hiss
Its specious threat.
My dad swung the shovel with power and expertise
provided by a lifetime of combat baseball
Splitting open the illusory sanctity of life
With a neat meaty swap and stark bonesnap
Heavy (holy
Shit) metal
The shovel left a dent in my mind when it crushed the grandly fat
groundhog (fuckers look like feral prehistoric hamsters more than
anything) I had to ask, had
to know. “Dad, is it dead”
Dad said “Noooo, Seaner - it’s just sleeping. He’ll wake up
with a hell of a headache”
I brooded on that for a ten second interval, a childmind
eternity: Felt my guts smote by fatal analogy.
like dad I said
in head silent
(spelt like dead, but w/o the
E, dear Jee
Zuss!). Could old Death be nothing
but the bastard behind the eyes
the morning after a company of fourteen
Gleaming cans of cold coors
Strategically arranged with war machines
of whiskey
against the smashed night before.
Strategically arranged to overtake the next day.
Someday, I would get a headache too. The dry dirt
would drink my blood like that fat ‘hogs. But after these
headaches that looked like death, Dad would always get up
again right? Life ends with the day, but the next crawls beery,
weary from the weak grip of the ground. There was real
Religion. No need to believe in heaven if death is just
A hell-fired hangover: Aspirin a better opiate
of the people. Like the cracked ‘hogs-body
Like my hungover Dad, I would get over it.
I ran this idea by a dissociated me, or distant deity,
Silent as that ground-staining ‘hog
Silently asleep in its bashed heap
of gore. “Can’t let those fat bastards
Tear up Dickie’s culverts” Said my dad.
Damned ‘hogs attacking the
Sanctity of the state
Of the farm:
Bash them fat bastards
But good.
We made it to the dump fast after that first
‘hog obstacle. I played on the junk-laden slope
In labyrinth of rusted
barbed wire, plastic bags (containing maybe
drownd kittens or kilt babies or rabid coons?)
shattered planks and fenceposts, ‘phalt-gnawed
tires, tractor-carcasses,
Refrigerators, their doors torn off
As if in grip of a snacky sasquatch.
That’s when in the deep green wood
w/ my greedy eyes I saw it move -
The monster.
It was a massive rabbit
But its ears were cats’ears, sharkfin shaped
And it had big clawy paws
And it glowered at me… knowingly.
“Holy crap, Dad!”
I said - “What is that?”
Waved my branch in hard breeze
Arm at it. Dad spun, spied it already
leaping
Into the burying brush
Gone in a spurt
ghost-fast. A monster
Rabbit.
“Well son” said my dad “you’ve just seen your first
Cabbit.” I blinked, probly cute and uncomprehending
Swayed by the mystery and novelty of the name.
“Cabbit?” I asked
“Yass,” said my dad.
“Cat crossbred with a rabbit, Seaner. Science can do some crazy shit these days.
They breed ‘em over in battersea. Good feed for the hunters. Release ‘em in the woods. Keep
The mouse population down, to boot.”
“They set them loose….to shoot them?” I asked.
“Yass,” said my dad.
Clouds in the blue sky of my brown eyes I
Contemplated the concept of Cabbit.
What did it eat?
Cats eat meat
But bunnies eat
Carrots and
Mate like motherfucks
And have awesome eyesight
To forage at night.
But that wasn’t the craziest
Part of the concept of cabbits.
“Dad,” I asked
“Big cats eat lil rabbits, right?”
“Yass,” said my Dad.
“But if big cabbit ate lil rabbit
Would that make it a cannibal?”
My dad thought deeply.
The dead ‘hog danced on
in my head.
“It just might,” said my Dad,
inscrutably smiling.
almost as much as fishing, little limbs apiston w/ excitement,
and my Dad, bad Bobby Mo, after an out late-nite,
cheeked red by beer, cheerful grin but beat-tired eyes.
In the punchy battered flatbed
Little passenger gasping laughter
Rattled and rocked down the crushed-mud,
tractor-ruptured cowpath, cracked
Peaks and ruts of wet crap, black sludge.
The shovel and pitchfork sat in the back Dad
used to pick up dead water rats, farmcats (often
swallowed by the landscape, turning up later in rank
pastoral studies, flystruck anatomies I could stare at for hours.)
Or the fork could be used for rabbits, or groundhogs or occasional coons.
(I knew from school or somewhere even at nine that meant black
persons sometimes too, which didn’t make sense
since coons were gray and white with just little
black theatrical masks - but anyway, not in this case)
No black persons lived in Inverary, Sunbury or Battersea. None
went to Storrington skool with me either until one kid (round
smily guy in a cammo ballcap name was maybe ryan) came
two years later. My dad had a blue ballcap. Bluejays. Saw those birds
Here, more often in winter. Cap colours were like headdress-feathers
For warring Indian tribes of my ten year old mind, dirty white like
A treasure map dug from the cobwebbed crawlspace.
My dad had thick trunks for arms, from lifting fridges
And concrete blocks and swinging baseball bats and rasslin
Assholes who had it coming. I jerked fwd as his right foot slammed
stopping the truck shudder, dead, in its tracks. Dad leapt out of the cab.
I looked around supercharged with excite alarms and saw the waddling form,
ambling rapid for its hole. Dad snatched up the shovel in one swoop
blur of movement, heard it wiz
Whistle heard the
Bolting ‘hog hiss
Its specious threat.
My dad swung the shovel with power and expertise
provided by a lifetime of combat baseball
Splitting open the illusory sanctity of life
With a neat meaty swap and stark bonesnap
Heavy (holy
Shit) metal
The shovel left a dent in my mind when it crushed the grandly fat
groundhog (fuckers look like feral prehistoric hamsters more than
anything) I had to ask, had
to know. “Dad, is it dead”
Dad said “Noooo, Seaner - it’s just sleeping. He’ll wake up
with a hell of a headache”
I brooded on that for a ten second interval, a childmind
eternity: Felt my guts smote by fatal analogy.
like dad I said
in head silent
(spelt like dead, but w/o the
E, dear Jee
Zuss!). Could old Death be nothing
but the bastard behind the eyes
the morning after a company of fourteen
Gleaming cans of cold coors
Strategically arranged with war machines
of whiskey
against the smashed night before.
Strategically arranged to overtake the next day.
Someday, I would get a headache too. The dry dirt
would drink my blood like that fat ‘hogs. But after these
headaches that looked like death, Dad would always get up
again right? Life ends with the day, but the next crawls beery,
weary from the weak grip of the ground. There was real
Religion. No need to believe in heaven if death is just
A hell-fired hangover: Aspirin a better opiate
of the people. Like the cracked ‘hogs-body
Like my hungover Dad, I would get over it.
I ran this idea by a dissociated me, or distant deity,
Silent as that ground-staining ‘hog
Silently asleep in its bashed heap
of gore. “Can’t let those fat bastards
Tear up Dickie’s culverts” Said my dad.
Damned ‘hogs attacking the
Sanctity of the state
Of the farm:
Bash them fat bastards
But good.
We made it to the dump fast after that first
‘hog obstacle. I played on the junk-laden slope
In labyrinth of rusted
barbed wire, plastic bags (containing maybe
drownd kittens or kilt babies or rabid coons?)
shattered planks and fenceposts, ‘phalt-gnawed
tires, tractor-carcasses,
Refrigerators, their doors torn off
As if in grip of a snacky sasquatch.
That’s when in the deep green wood
w/ my greedy eyes I saw it move -
The monster.
It was a massive rabbit
But its ears were cats’ears, sharkfin shaped
And it had big clawy paws
And it glowered at me… knowingly.
“Holy crap, Dad!”
I said - “What is that?”
Waved my branch in hard breeze
Arm at it. Dad spun, spied it already
leaping
Into the burying brush
Gone in a spurt
ghost-fast. A monster
Rabbit.
“Well son” said my dad “you’ve just seen your first
Cabbit.” I blinked, probly cute and uncomprehending
Swayed by the mystery and novelty of the name.
“Cabbit?” I asked
“Yass,” said my dad.
“Cat crossbred with a rabbit, Seaner. Science can do some crazy shit these days.
They breed ‘em over in battersea. Good feed for the hunters. Release ‘em in the woods. Keep
The mouse population down, to boot.”
“They set them loose….to shoot them?” I asked.
“Yass,” said my dad.
Clouds in the blue sky of my brown eyes I
Contemplated the concept of Cabbit.
What did it eat?
Cats eat meat
But bunnies eat
Carrots and
Mate like motherfucks
And have awesome eyesight
To forage at night.
But that wasn’t the craziest
Part of the concept of cabbits.
“Dad,” I asked
“Big cats eat lil rabbits, right?”
“Yass,” said my Dad.
“But if big cabbit ate lil rabbit
Would that make it a cannibal?”
My dad thought deeply.
The dead ‘hog danced on
in my head.
“It just might,” said my Dad,
inscrutably smiling.