First Shot

I said I was hunting deer. I knew the trails, the split tracks and pellets of shit; circles
where they bedded down together. I faced a buck once, for almost ten minutes I think;
I moved first and it left me. I ran home to think.

I had a bow, target arrows, a target on straw. My father said be careful, and I was, but
I sneaked my bow and arrow to the woods. I surprised a tiny rabbit near a hole. It
froze. I had an arrow on it. I moved and it ran for the hole. I never shot.

They had a blanket, in a clearing of wiry grass that sloped to the north. He had her
down, her hands all over his back. I thought I knew her. They hadn't seen me. I notched
an arrow. His head turned my way, vague, like he needed his glasses, and maybe afraid.
I got scared, I wasn't sure what it was; I shot my arrow, my first shot, wild I think, and ran.

I waited for something for weeks, for more than weeks. I couldn't answer questions. I
thought I saw her a few times, later. I never went back until I was sixteen, almost, and
nothing was there but I only stayed for a minute.

poem by Eric Torgersen
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Scenario

Had enough of the old lonesome-and-blue scenario?
Up for a shot at the old I-love-you scenario?

Man enough to leave your comfort zone
in the good old get-drunk-and-screw scenario?

Let's be real. Love hurts. Even you, you stud, you.
Sure you can handle the old boo-hoo scenario?

Don't even try to guess what she really wants;
get ready for the old you-don't-have-a-clue scenario.

Tell her, "I'll always honor your personhood."
What's more of a drag than the old I'm-a-person-too scenario?

It's never not a good time to say, "My bad."
Don't lean too hard on the old I-never-knew scenario.

Caught in a little white lie? You're in deep shit
if you trapped yourself in the old I-swear-it's-true scenario.

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poem by Eric Torgersen
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An Apple from Walt Whitman

There's never been a poet where I live,
but I grew up in the shade of Whitman's name:
born in West Hills—our hills—he would have walked
our paths along the crest. I walked Whitman Road,
crashed the Whitman Drive-In, stole a book
from the sci-fi rack at the Melville-Whitman Pharmacy,
even played lacrosse against Whitman High;
we lost three times, the guys from Halfway Hollow,
to young men with Whitman in white on their varsity jackets.

My mother tells a story about Thanksgiving,
back when kids went begging in rags and blackface:
how Carrie Wicks's sister said she got
an apple from Walt Whitman, right at his house,
an old man with a beard. The big kids laughed,
knowing the white-haired caretaker was no one.

I set no foot inside the Whitman House
or Leaves of Grass till after I went away,
but I'm better having grown up with the name,

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poem by Eric Torgersen
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A Vacation

On the streets of Mérida, beggars and vendors
of shirts and hammocks and panama hats.
We perfect our no. But there's always something
we can't help saying yes to: I want to join
these men on holiday on the ferry to Isla Mujeres,
laughing and teasing, knocking off one another's hats.
Each lays his head on the shoulder of the next
and they sleep a while together, in a row.
Then they wake up and laugh and tease some more,
pour water on the one who turns his back.

At Chichén Itzá it's the cenote, the huge
natural well they must have built the city for.
Books tell us all we need about the buildings,
the almost fascist, inhuman Toltec grandeur
of the space there, but what can a book say
about the cenote which no one built?
I want to stay there.
On a clear night it would hold a lot of stars.

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poem by Eric Torgersen
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