Big Game

Let’s hunt together
and plan to eat what we kill
and then kill everything.  Let’s hunt
like gluttons, like we’re going
stoned to the supermarket —

OOOh, a whole world meat aisle!
A planet of produce and snack cakes!
Give me the elephant gun, there are cookies
in Afghanistan I’m dying to try!  There are

some lovely cuts of beef in Luxembourg!
And if we work together, we can butcher it all
in the field without messing up our homes.

Field dress the edible population of the world!
We have nothing to lose but our hunger.
We can put salt licks on the islands
and make the deer swim to us

as we lie in wait, naked on the beach.
We can build blinds — hell, the blind
is where we live!  And let’s not forget
domestic production — some of those ghettos
and reservations and all of Appalachia
are good eatin.’  I’m itching to try the cuts
slow-roasted over a fire, right where we drop them,

and then we’ll have a little wine and a little dance,
something to tamp the full belly down;
it’ll help with the digestion, don’t you know?

Why did we make the flag so big and so colorful
if we weren’t supposed to use it to wrap up the spoils
of a good season?  All it takes is a little skill
and a big, big gun and we’ve got a bounty before us —
so let’s go hunting, you and I,
while the big red sun is nailed to the sky
and the biggest damn banquet ever
is still laid out on the biggest table.

Tags: poems, poetry, current-events