Maybe I will buy a rifle after all. One that takes quite some time to load.
At least as much time as it took to set up the still life that I will shoot with it.
A nautilus shell as the sum of all shallow diagonals, and corn lilies on a sympathetic background, all the world limbed with an inky lack of sleep.
A smoothbore ball to suit, breaking some small mammal skull into mosaic intractability, muzzle flash igniting the kinetic.
Smoothbore, like a clay trail polished by generations walking to the mailbox.
Smoothly bored
nowhere as often
as on the return trip
with your postcards and rejection letters.