In the Crosshairs

For five days the buck hung
from the wrought-iron grate,

a large, brown buck, heavy with muscle.
Its eyes held the look of an animal

about to be shot.
Raymond Benedetti, a pharmacist,

with a half-dozen hunting dogs
smelling of musk-rank fur,

worked his knife into its belly,
unknotting entrails before my eyes.

It wasn’t until the fifth day
that someone complained

about the stench and sound
of the chainsaw grinding through bone,

about the head that lay
on the front stoop one evening,

its deciduous antlers hacked from the skull.
I watched as a young boy would, an accomplice,

under a pale gray Midwestern sky
deep in November.

The neighbor’s cats kept their distance,
the air charged with pity and thanksgiving.


“In the Crosshairs” was originally published in Willow Review, 1993.

“In the Crosshairs” received an award from Poets & Patrons of Illinois in 1993.