Issue > Poetry
RJ Hooker

RJ Hooker

RJ Hooker is currently an M.F.A. candidate in poetry at George Mason University. His poems have previously appeared in The Innisfree Poetry Journal.

Excavation

After their father died, the brothers had to go through the belongings. They found boxes of .22 bullets, an old Shakespeare fishing reel, and the remains of a Costa Rican t-shirt. A record player full of lady bug shells. Photos of their dad holding pull-tab beer cans in Vietnam. In another box, a Polaroid of their dad's ex wife: the older brother's mom. The picture had white veins running across it from being handled so many times. In a rifle bag there was a dead bird wrapped in an oil cloth, its feathers slick and shining. They took what they wanted, dumped the rest. One brother took a mounted buck with a shattered glass eye. The other brother kept a canteen filled with sand.