That 2 (2017), p.

54
http://thatliteraryreview.com/Issue2.html

A Wildlife Photographer

My father could drink his cheap beer all day, watching

wildlife programs from his chair.—I have the feeling
that his November hunts were at heart a child’s urge
to take in splendors from secret spots of stillness.

Walking to our spot, he would point out deer pebbles

and reconstruct trails. He would finger the fresh rubs,
spry even without beer in his system. “Bucks scrape
the velvet off their antlers because it itches.”—

“A doe,” he whispered at our spot once. “Just a fawn.”

I was knocked out in our makeshift blind of branches,
but his elbows were insistent. “Look! She’s a beaut.
Pretty one,” he said in reverie. “Fuzzy still.—

Op. She hears us. See how her head cocked up like that?—
Leave the goddamn chips alone a sec.—Hear that snort?
Yep. She knows something’s up. We might be busted. Fwhew!”
he snorted back through his lips to keep her in place.

But then my father’s look went grave, his eyes glassy,

by some program, planting the butt at his shoulder.—
He was brought into these woods by his own father.
And they brought a shotgun, never a camera.

M. A. ISTVAN JR. PhD, good-looking despite the

crookedness and skull protuberances of a criminal,
is full of dissimulation and never looks people in
the eye. He stands apart from others mainly from a
fear of being found out. Istvan survives by poaching
burl and—there is no help for it—by government
assistance.