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"The Detonation of Rabbits"
by Ray Succre

Before the clickhead end, they loped
across a dry field, animates consorting
stones, in the scrubbery blurred
like bronchioles flared, each a panicked,
heaving lung atop the flats.

The ground blared, hoarse, dry and scabbed,
smothering curtain breezes trapped down
and outstretched on dairy land, running
between two meaty ears on jigsaw hindlegs...

That run--stamping a dustwake pounded
to clouds in blood. The eyes floated on it.
A man's blast struck the open air like a maul.
Its resonance startled clothing.
A rabbit tumbled.

Two boys and a man looking down.
"I'm sorry." Clouds and dirt.
"It's in pain." Baking hair.
"I can't kill it." A lip curved sick
atop one hand's hot soda, near other hand
flexing an extension of reason, the hole
of the rifle's life.

Then trigger, blunt comma drawn in,
was the sensation of copper detonation,
and a shot popping in a dustbloom
that wouldn't settle for a child excuse.
"Good job." To a twitch.

The air saw it,
the father and brother presented it,
and I sat cold as the dead rabbit
faded, having leaped off the world
with a boy.

Ray Succre currently lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and baby son. He has been published in Aesthetica, Laika and Rock Salt Plum, as well as in numerous others across as many countries. He tries hard.