BOOK REVIEW David Rigsbee reviews Divine Comedy: Journeys through a Regional Geography three new works by John Kinsella
Gregory Lawless is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from "Best of the Net 2007," Blood Orange Review, Contrary, The Cortland Review, Drunken Boat, H_NGM_N, La Petite Zine, Memorious, nth position, Stride, and 2River. His first book, I Thought I Was New Here, will be published in 2009 by BlazeVOX. He teaches literature and writing at Suffolk University in Boston.
Night Poachers
A half-mile from the last split-level shack
on Shadrach Street, the Mehoopany poachers
shoot their headlights into the field
and cock their rifles and crack
open six packs of Busch; the hot steel
hood ticking cool as the fog
roves up from the banks of Tunkhannock
Creek. I stopped by the field to smoke
through the dusk
and piled a small cairn of butts
by my feet, jerking my head
at the crackling brush
toward birds I couldn't see.
Now the grasses are glazed
in a watchtower glare. The woodchucks
and hares flinch
and sprint through the spooked
lights from the truck. Their unearthly stares
flashing green between scraps
of switch grass and wild rye.
What do I say
to the poachers fifty feet from me,
each of us where we shouldn't be?
At night, do you bother
to aim? Do you shoot what you hear
and only half-see?
