Grabbing this old BB gun by its rust patched barrel,
my grandfather told my brother, “whole quarter for
every cat skin you bring back here.” He spit the same
red color from his teeth after, and Nate can be
some kind of ass these days so he believed him.
It was a stray the old man was after, that’d leave
scratches in the large tomatoes that hung like
fat ticks from the thick stalks of green in the yard.
Mom decided to name it Odysseus, saying it was
just searching around for a way home.
My uncle Dwayne said they should make catsup
and covered his eyes while we all hollered, trying to
wipe the tears that came with his dim-witted smile of
a laugh. I asked Grandpa what he was going to do with
the tomatoes, if the cat wouldn’t get to all of them first.
The group settled as if I shouldn’t have been so smart.
Grabbing me by the neck, putting a shears to my ear,
he said to me, “How’d you like getting clipped like that?”
I dropped to the floor and saw his startled eyes; in my
hand was the dripping pool of what he had decided to do.
This poem was originally published in the Aquinas College Sampler