Claire McGuire

THE ACCIDENTAL HUNTER

Does blood smell like burnt rubber to you?
Now nothing but a stain on the highway.
The windshield cracked like a finely cut crystal,
It was glass that opened the animal's sorry neck.

Is that why you flinch at the sight of tomatoes
In our September garden, rotting while
Beetles make lacework of the leaves,
Do they remind you of flesh bursting at the seams?

Do you remember being scared drunk and praying
That the deer was an angel or hallucination?
While steam rose from the broken bodies
Of your vehicle and the animal like incense to God.

Claire McGuire is an art history student living in the Hudson Valley.