Alabama Haint

It comes through the window.

A hole not punched but punctured,

a clean wound, bleeding no shards.

There is, remarkably, no shimmer of glass upon the rug.

The window still stands, around the gutshot.

This quiet violence, they tell me,

could only have been accomplished

by an expert marksman.

A woodland hunter.

In these parts, that could be anyone.

By now they could be long gone,

vanished over state lines,

deep beneath the black bayou.

They shrug and leave,

with their notebooks and their badges.

How common is this, in houses unpainted with blue?

Am I the fool? The entitled?

Do I have knowledge but no wisdom?

This is their groaning legacy:

pills, whiskey, guns, no room at the inn

for those whose brains and souls are

stitched-up open wrists, patchwork quilts.

I see the sleepy willows and the dandelions, a century from now.

Their graves are ravaged by weeds.

Their sin is a hole in my living room window.