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      November 6, 2013Scent and BonesMike Saye

      I once watched my father pull a .30-30 from his truck,
      lever a slug, and shoot a German Shepherd on a dead run,
      open-sighted, through a hundred yards of trees.

      It had killed a pullet from our lot
      and tracked blood through the skeletal frame
      of the new home we were building—
      our first house—just up the hill
      from the trailer I’d always known.

      Daddy hit it high up in the rear leg
      and it scrambled away—yowling, screaming.

      A day later we found it by scent
      beneath the joists of the new place.

      My father dragged its body
      to the woods where the smell
      hollowed out a home all its own,
      staked a claim for apathy,
      and left its bones.

      from #39 - Spring 2013