Outside/A/War

Weston Cutter

The bird beyond the window coasts
to land on the gun propped
against the dead tree, big and wild

these animals are different from what
I know. My friend’s gone a week, I’m
to take care of his creaky old place,

candlelit, a broom of bound grass
leaning in the corner, the sounds outside
and the sounds inside just about the same.

The rifle’s his: he told me to shoot some-
thing good for us to eat on his return,
but all I’ve ever killed are insects, things

which only pester because walls dictate
they’re in the wrong place. The bird hollers,
perched like a dim metaphor, standing on

the barrel’s business end. His own candles
too, of course: makes them like he made
the broom and the table, by hand and sweat;

says he’d learn to make soap if the process
didn’t threaten explosion, plus he likes
to live in the green smell of Palmolive.

Something there is black in a black bird’s
call. There are more guns, of course:
next to the lantern (refurbished, old

tin, scrubbed of oxidation, more light
than six bulbs) there’s another rifle, same
blued steel barrel, same steady trigger,

waiting. I agreed to come out here because
I like to remember the difference
between on and off, that light’s more

than a flicked switch, warmth a turned dial.
It’s coming dark, mid-August: I can’t guess
if the bird knows already that it’ll go soon.

A candle pops like a shot, and I jump:
a wick’s dipped in wax a hundred times,
two hundred, but that first time, if just

an ant’s breath of air clings as the wick
gets its first coating, when that light’s
life is lived there’s both brightness

and sound, pop with a hiss following: air
released after some unimaginable trap,
old bug freed from amber. I tap the window,

and the bird turns from one profile
to another, scanning the house’s handcrafted
edges, the marked boundaries, and when

he heaves unfolding from his perch,
the gun lies down in shade, a made thing
made once more temporarily quiet.

Weston Cutter is finally moving back to the Midwest after too long a time away and has also recently developed a thirll for sushi (eel!).

“Outside/A/War” appears in our Spring 2010 issue.