I was staying at
a cabin in the mountains,
amongst a thousand trees,
with a girl who came
from a family of hunters,
all of us there
for just a few days.
It was a meat trip,
to stock up on venison in their
six foot wide freezer.
They left the cabin at 6 am,
gone four hours,
during which we heard
eight or nine echoing booms,
like a low-budget fireworks show
in the next town over,
spread out over the time.
They came back
and strung him up,
to help him drain,
they carefully
removed his crowned head with
a few well-placed machete slices, efficiently,
over a few five gallon buckets.
They placed his head on the stained, cracked linoleum,
just out of the way of the downward stream.
I looked at him for at least
ten minutes,
from a distance.
I waited for them
to go back out,
and I got closer.
He looked like a fighter,
swaying, muscular, fit,
but fur wet with blood,
near the tiny hole,
where it stuck out in slick points,
like thorns,
like a cat just out of the rain.
He was hanging, dripping, steaming.
The flow was steady and sparkling, then trickling, then
three seconds between the black drops
falling into the buckets.
He smelled like wet wool sweaters
left too long in a washer.
He couldn’t stop staring
with his flat black eyes,
and we gazed at each other,
wondering the few differences
between us.
– John LeMasney
John LeMasney reading Venison.
Stories of Failure & Kindness 