There once was a girl who peed in protest down the steps
Of the deer stand of her not-so-great grandfather
Four years before his hands would hand her back to hell,
Her grandfather, who taught her how to debone a chicken
Who made her watch as he slipped his hands in and out
Of the broken breastplate so sticky with glop until he touched
Some secret meat tucked away behind the backfat –
He tells her about his disfigured lip chopped off by the chunk,
From a youth spent in Florida chewing on chewing dip and
Dipping into wasted women, calls himself an old “hippie”
As he fingers the trigger and takes another bite of his breakfast,
The stench of her urine stings and sings out like a funeral knell,
Warning the woods and warming her thighs with their wet heat –
When she is older, his hands will find her body frozen in flight,
Like a doe in the precarious dawn.