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A proud and upright huntress
Seated in her big-game room
Surrounded by hectares of dead stuffed flesh
Wearing a later-life rictus smile
She has opted for anonymity
Due to “threats from animal activists”
And as for me
I never thought such a room to exist
So now she can count me among them

Antlers, antlers rise everywhere
And hordes of tiny wild cats
Snarling, fleeing, seated stilled
Arranged together in curlicues
On rugs of other animals’ skins
And up beside the Texas brick
Two brown bears rise majestic
A Mexican jaguar, but even these
Are not the proudest centrepiece
Would you believe, she flew to the Arctic
To bag an off-white polar bear
Who balances with just one paw
On some sort of iceberg fakery

Metal cowboy statues on the mantle
Possum posed alertly at her feet
A turkey rampant in the corner
A turkey! Incongruous within
This death-montage of incongruity.

She says, in drawl to the magazine
There are people who hunt, I have always said
And people who don’t, who usually hate it.
Well, not quite so. It’s the huntress herself
And not the “it” we’re inclined to hate:
The complacent huntress. The state of mind
That supposes the slaughter of creatures for game
Finds justification in gross display.

(see http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012 ... f=magazine New York Times Magazine, 27 May 2012)

Cannot begin to express how much I love this, rmorgan!
As one who does not subscribe to hunting, but in the past having visited at my brother's where some antlers hang on the wall... this is SO ON TARGET.
It was published in the New York Times Magazine? Good on you!!!

No, the poem was not published, rather the tag at the end refers to the NY Times Magazine article that prompted the poem.

I wonder what you'd think of the article?
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012 ... f=magazine

R

Oh, okay... I see now on how you came by your well-wrought poem.

It's obsessive, horrifying, and sad.
A relationship with nature that I can't fathom, and that feels inherently and deep-seatedly wrong.

What I've seen on my brother's wall exceeds the one thing I mentioned, but thank heaven they aren't as packed as these walls.
Have never been to his hunting cabin. Know that he ridiculed me for spending money to go see Leonard, yet the truth of his hunting expenses measure up to the typical amount in his typical trip west to hunt in the mountains of Montana. His total days per year far exceed those below.

TEXAS POPULATION: 25.7 MILLION
HUNTERS IN TEXAS: 979,000
AVERAGE NUMBER OF DAYS HUNTERS SPEND HUNTING IN A YEAR: 14
AVERAGE AMOUNT SPENT HUNTING PER PERSON: $2,001

So, she finally's quit at 70? Very saddened to see all the majestic animals who lost their lives in her interim.

Your poem is intense and befitting the sub-human scenes depicted in the majority of the photos.
May karma be the great leveler.