Luke Shuttleworth

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First Kills

My father kept his shotgun by the door,
a Remington 870, pistol gripped,
folding stock, and a red-dot scope.
He was a coyote hunter for the State
of Wyoming, shooting the little bastards
from a helicopter with the first light
of morning, leaving them to decay.
Told me the key was matching
your heartbeat to the rotor’s chopping;
he’d kill fifty a day in the spring.

I shot my first coyote at the age of eight,
hit him from seventy feet up.
On my third shot he rolled hard
as his left shoulder gave way to .32 caliber balls
from a double-ought shell.
The gun kicked back into my shoulder,
the scope into my eye.
Blood trickled off my brow,
into my vision, and down my collar.
The pilot circled until the animal stopped crawling
to its feet just to topple over when it tried to run.
The brush was stained red in a fifteen foot stagger.
That night I didn’t sleep and waiting
until I heard my father’s snoring to cry.

Eighteen years and hundreds of coyotes later
I killed my first man. Emptied the magazine
of my M-4 from behind blue strobes,
as he stepped from an ’87 Mustang
he’d wrapped around a telephone pole,
pistol clutched tight.

Later at home there were no tears,
just a kiss on my sleeping wife’s forehead
and a tall glass of bourbon while I cleaned
and set up my replacement rifle.

 

Retirement of a Dancer

The drinks at the Rippled Z Tavern
stay colder for a bit longer.
Friday nights find me here
shooting pool in a blue neon glow,
cigarette smoke drifting out from beneath
a mud-stained straw hat.
Leonard, the owner and sole employee,
rocks back and forth on a rickety stool,
runs a shaking wrinkled hand
through chalk white hair,
stubs out his Camel non-filtered in a brass tray.
His yellow lab, Dorothy, runs
by looking to beg food.

Leonard used to be a ballroom dancer
down in southern California,
one of the best they say, but dancing
doesn’t have retirement plans,
and age catches up quick, stepping
in double time across hardwood floors.
All he’s got these days is this little Kansas bar,
a small apartment a few blocks away,
and a drink named after him at some high
rollers joint on the outskirts of San Diego,
but every time I come in and play Waylon’s
What Ever Happened to the Blues, he smiles,

gets up off his stool and asks the prettiest
gal in the smoky room to dance.
She ain’t always all that pretty, but he takes her hand,
lifting her from her seat.
Together they foxtrot past the dartboard,
circle every whisky-stained table,
leading his partner gracefully
around the dog, while the lab howls
softly in tune with the sad old song.

 

We Were Stars

As the sun falls towards the foothills
my cow-dog mutt chases ravens from decaying calf remains,
leftovers from last night’s coyote raid.

I sit on my tailgate down by the pond
shooting carp that swim into the shallows,
the light fading with each blast from my Colt,

take a pull off the whiskey bottle and reload my pistol,
think back to childhood playing for hours in my dad’s pastures,
a gray Irish Wolfhound following my every step.

I’d name the cattle after country music stars,
we’d sing the afternoons away from a cow-shit stage.
God-be-damned if we weren’t the biggest act in town.
Then slaughter time would roll around
and the band would break up.

Fuck ‘em anyway, I was always better alone.

These days it’s just me and the mutt,
singin’ Ian Tyson songs with the truck’s radio,
performin’ one last show for the fish.
Drawing ‘em in and knockin’ em dead.

 

Bio

Luke Shuttleworth has published in Rattle, Minnetonka Review, and Concho River Review. He holds a degree in Sociology and Criminal Justice from Kansas Wesleyan University where he played baseball. Luke's writing is influenced by poet Paul Zarzyski and songwriters Tom Russell, Townes Van Zandt, and Billy Joe Shaver.