by Christian Stephens
Slayden & Toby liked ranch life most of the time except then came culling season & daddy
tossed the stunner between them & said “FIGHT” & they tussled over it until Slayden
got the upper grip & Toby bled like hell & daddy laughed & laughed and slurped Jack
with his pitchfork fingers, so things had to be set straight.
Down in the pasture leftways & over the knoll with the bonfire palettes & old Christmas trees
where barbed wire runs adjacent to a sewer stream & the Cheyenne skyline burns brightest
lays the dud. Her teats & udders & feet & cancer eye wean raptors from flesh to moonlight
& she gurgles curds & weeps syrup onto fallow, the perfect candidate for wounded Toby.
He slinks through dusk with an iron & the gun to where the widow nests in worms & the cold
wind reinforces his motive. He starts with the shank then the thurl then the chine pounds
his way to the muzzle & is merciless & is ceaseless & eventually punctures outnumber her sores
& she can’t tell the screams from the anger nor he the heifer from the beast.
She gnashes the metal strings & Toby strangles the trigger, then a lull,
then a great fervor.
Come daybreak daddy sends Slayden to find Toby & beat the little shit
for not putting out meat scraps for the collies but really Slayden tosses rocks at the roosters
& delivers a falsified report and really Toby lies in wastewater with an iron through his throat
& an arm bent backwards fingers crossed devil-wise across his occiput. The carcass
shudders next to him, torn wire flowing from her bones like twine on a ruptured spool. She’s
sipping.