When I Heard You’d Been Shot

by your wife at her dad’s old farm
out in Mt Pleasant

I thought about corn in Autumn
how the stalks turn brown

and how deer mingle in the fields
chewing the hard kernels

and how raccoons stand on
their hind legs and look

like tiny humans in black masks
peeling back the husks.

When we were 10, we crept through
a farm just like the one where

your wife shot you off a tractor
for not paying her enough attention.

I guess she loved you
too much or hated you

too much or both, simultaneously
until you picked dirt over her love

because you needed dirt
to make money

and money to be in the world
as a husband

and she responded with a pistol
she’d bought at Walmart.

I see blood on everything
I eat now, even the corn

and how we shucked
all the kernels into pillow cases

and carried them into the neighborhood
to throw at front doors

on Devil’s Night
right before Halloween

to celebrate the beauty of destruction
of monsters and costumes

and the desire to eat candy
in the face of terror and death.

I’m sorry for so many things
I sometimes pretend to be speechless.

I knew your wife beat you
and I pretended it was a joke.

Dave Newman is the author of nine books, most recently, She Throws Herself Forward to Stop the Fall (Roadside Press, 2024) and How to Live Like Li Po in Pittsburgh (J.New Books, 2024). He lives in Trafford, PA, the last two in the Electric Valley.