First Kill

1

I always wanted to be a great

white hunter.
It wasn't easy

crawling
over the hot roof

of the toolshed
dragging my Daisy

carbine, peering
down into the cinders

and grass of the alley
till the big, striped

tabby made its move.
Bee-bee's rattled

as I lowered my sights.
The smell of machine oil

stoned me. Pffft
Direct hit. But the beast

yowled, spit
back and vamoosed.

2

An accident taught me
how to draw blood.

We were playing
in a lot with broken glass.

Who could throw
the fragments higher.

I winged one out of sight.
It returned, buzzing,

and cut the muscle
of Anthony Morga's calf.

3

They're up there
tucked away in struts
and shadows of the trestle

cooing and dropping
spatterdung on the street.
I watch them creep

out and rise
with a flurry of wing noise
wheeling in broken arcs

over the city. But
before they leave
their dingy labyrinth

they stop to puff
their chest feathers
and cock their heads.

That's when I pull
the inner tube
strips tight. Release.

The bottle chip spins, hissing
cutting it's take-off
to a floppy dive. He hits

the sidewalk and sits
there, one wing
flailing the kerb.

I pick him up.
He bleeds into my hands.

4

When the cops pass, I edge
into the alley and run
two blocks to a loose board
in the coal-yard fence.

I can feel his normal fever
against my skin. Why
won't he die? I toss him back
into the air but he can't

fly. When I lift him
again, one eye stares
vacant as garnet. Though his heart
races, he makes no move

to escape. I could leave him
for the cats, or keep him
a secret in my room, but that's
for kids and sisters. This

is where the gang made me
smoke, drink gin and scratch
its name on my arm, where I jumped
without clothes for a lousy buck

from the railroad bridge into a pile
of pea coal. No one's here.
I've got that choked feeling
you get the first time

you steal, or buy dirty books.
I've watched my father do it,
in the yard, with chickens:
Loop the string over scaly feet

and hoist them up. Then you squeeze
the beak wide, feed
the blade into his throat and cut.
Shudders. Violent wings.

Blood like royal vomit. Warm
feathers come loose with the sound
of ripped stitches. They're still
in the air when I slit

the skin, gut him, cut
off the head, the feet, then push
a stick through the body
and hold it

over a flaming nest
of brown paper bags and stained newspaper.

5

Without salt, without
water to wash

his death away the taste
was wild, but I chewed
and swallowed even the small wishbone.

 

© George Amabile