Weak Devotions. Luke Hankins

the mud itself along with their prey.

      We hosed them down and hoped they wouldn’t vomit in the house

      when they had dried.

      I watched cardinals hunting food and singing

      in the yard, the dogs huffing on the sun-hot patio.

      I brought the dogs inside,

      but one was limping now

      and looking down with glazed eyes.

      We noticed a swollen leg, and laid the trembling dog down

      as he died.

      Cottonmouth, dad said.

      ~

      I knew the prayers we’d been brought up to say—

      Your kingdom come,

      your will be done on earth

      as it is in heaven.

      I took dad’s shovel and dug a hole big enough for a kid like me.

      There were roots and stones, so it took hours.

      Dad had come out

      to say he would finish it, then later that it was big enough,

      but I wouldn’t let him stop me. I kept on digging,

      thinking Whose will is this?

      I finally went inside. My hands had blistered

      and the blisters had broken against the handle

      and they were raw and bleeding. I rinsed my hands

      and bandaged them.

      I remember thinking about Christ, trying to make

      myself mean it as I said

      Well, damn—if God can die, then so can I

      before I fell asleep.

      Louisiana

      In Pineville, Dad would chop the heads

      of cottonmouths off with a flat-head shovel

      and the bodies would spurt blood and writhe

      as if in anger. I almost had my head taken off

      by a flat-head shovel in the hands of a neighbor boy—

      no lie—and was pissed on by another—

      and who knows why? Once, I watched a 5-year-old

      pull the trigger of a pellet gun

      aimed at the belly of another boy

      and he ran screaming up the hill to his house.

      We learned later that the lead curved upwards

      and almost reached his heart, almost killed him.

      The police officer questioned me the next day

      in my home, and I identified the weapon—

      identical to one I used to hunt snakes in the creek.

      After telling him of the eerie proclamation

      I witnessed—“I’m going to shoot you”—

      and the immediate, reasonless violence that followed,

      I cried, then lay on Mother’s lap in silence on the couch.

      I imagined the holes tunneled through his liver

      by the hot metal hungry for his heart

      and I renounced my own rifle.

      Inventory

      Rusted cans, split bottles,

      fallen branches and spilt nails,

      busted fence-posts, stones

      and scraps of steel,

      heavy tire rims, broken rails, strings

      of barbed wire and a thousand

      things that catch fire

      or that swing or sting

      or separate bones with their weight . . .

      If you know how to look,

      there are weapons everywhere.

      Blood

      I’ve drawn blood

      from others, in my childhood,

      even friends and kin—

      slit the heavy garment

      of skin or split sinus caves

      with my hard fist.

      Very young, I cried

      if my sister hurt herself.

      Later, her hot blood slicked

      my hammering hand—

      that hurt was, more

      than hers, my own.

      And she wept for me.