James Kimbrell is the author of the poetry collections The Gatehouse Heaven and My Psychic. A finalist in Narrative’s Fourth Annual Poetry Contest,
he has received many other honors, including the Whiting Writers’ Award and a Ruth Lilly Prize. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where he directs the creative writing program at Florida State University.

Ode: Feeling Up My Friend’s Sister at the Moment Their Drunken Father Begins the Dog Slaughter

by James Kimbrell

1.

It’s like instant punishment for the nipple she shows me, the pinkish tender at my fingertips before her father pumps the first shells into the chamber, before the original buckshot blast, the initial yelp, the first half-dead dog twitching in the grass.
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