Fatal

While driving down Hurricane Creek Road,
Randle whips the truck over in loose gravel,
pulls a thirty-eight from under the seat,
swings the door open, and pops shots
at the shadow of a coyote in thick brush.
“We’ve lost calves to them,” he says.
Later, as we pull up to the pig barn,
a flock of buzzards stack the fence,
decorate the winter oak like a candelabra.
He reloads in the cab, kicks the door open
and fires into the air. One buzzard flops
in the feed trough, the others blossom
into a black rose in the sky. An old boar
lying down has bleeding scars on its side.
“In winter, the fuckers will eat an animal alive,”
he says. “We’ve had buzzards recognize
a sow giving birth and crowd to her canal
to tear at pigs as they’re born.” He reloads
and shoots at a circle of dots in the sky.
Randle’s father dead a month, his wife
with cancer, no insurance, his animals
being killed by coyotes, eaten alive
by buzzards, he hates death. He’ll
drop it out of the sky if he can.