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Markus Lloyd

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The Bird Hunter

Before you fired, you’d try taking hold of stillness.
Stillness was the target, inside
and out. You looked for it in the sight,
located in the crosshairs. The bursting of stillness
by the trigger barked direction in the ear of the pellet
as it vacated the rifle. It was stillness you gifted a bird.
You could tell us apart by the indentation in our thumbs,
left by the skirted ammunition we loaded
into the oily two-two caliber of our guns,
by the distinct o. We wanted to be known.
We’d take the birds we’d shot, break into the schoolyard
and prod their heads through the diamond gaps
in the link fence, high out of a teacher’s reach.
We wanted the girls to see we had killed,
for them to look up and fake disgust.
We’d jockey the wall dividing our yards, wolf-whistling,
and the girls would flash their pants and blow us kisses,
wanting to be our girlfriends, promising us fingers.

Markus Lloyd's poems have appeared in numerous magazines, and feature in the anthology Seren Selections (Seren, 2006).

Page(s) 47

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