IN THE WOODS Carl Boon We sharpened sticks to trap tigers and one time caught a girl instead, blond and spinning, lost in the chorus of a pop song. From our hiding places in the trees, we heard a wail, then the splitting of skin-it has a sound: notebook paper torn from a binder, an old man shaving his beard. We worked in secret and were never charged, though in church or at the mirror I sometimes wondered if it had been a lung, instead, a throat, an artery. If I could find her I'd tell her we meant no harm, were after tigers only, the imaginary ones that approached Pierce County on clouds, in angry silence. We only wanted to save the world- we needed to save the world that many summers before had grown beyond our indiscretions. There was no way to be a hero when Vietnam was on TV, no way to make our parents smile when our brothers were already dead. Carl Boon's debut collection of poems, Places & Names, will be published this year by The Nasiona Press. His poems have appeared in many journals and magazines, including Posit and The Maine Review. He received his Ph.D. in Twentieth-Century American Literature from Ohio University in 2007, and currently lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at Dokuz Eylül University. Previous Poem  Table of Contents  Next Poem