Hunting

There’s something like cinder
in his voice these days.
He’s flying out tomorrow
without her, he says,
wiping down duck hunting boots
in his open garage.

Maybe it’s his guarded step,
when his wife is near,
how this man, that woman
delete each other—
Perhaps it’s his love
for silly pet store fish,
the way he gently taps
fish food into their bowl.

I imagine him wading
through deep water to me,
as if I were a Mallard,
brown eyes flashing,
his humid breath mixing with mine
like wood smoke.

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Meg Pokrass is a fiction writer who lives in San Francisco where truth is questionable. Her debut collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” will be published in 2011 by Press 53. Meg’s work was selected for Wigleaf’s Top 50 Flash Fiction 2009. She has published over one hundred stories and poems.