There’s a spring-loaded Red Rider
leaning next to the glass
of my back door. It’s the same gun
 
I used as a child to snap little holes
in empty Coke cans. Light shone
through, casting stars to the ground
 
like a little planetarium.
Today I tossed palmfuls of rye seed,
shook the bag out into my yard.
 
It felt a little like pellets
rattled loose from those
perforated cans.
 
It’s the time of year
for manure and flies and green
blades slicing through mud,
 
and the birds who feast
on my garden. I’ll clap my hands
at a pigeon, but the mockingbirds cut
 
through my yard in territorial furls.
They have found my tomatoes
as delicious as I do.
 
Each day I find a new one
beak-pocked. But birds
aren’t cans to shake
 
pellets out of,
to put a flashlight in
and spin out lighted patterns.
 
And I keep thinking of this
when I go to pick tomatoes
and their poked-open guts
spill with their seeds on my hand.
 
###
 
Cody Wilson teaches English and Creative Writing in Arizona. He has an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. His chapbook, Nobody is Ever Missing, was published by Tolsun Books. Some of his work appears at Juxtaprose, The Southampton Review, Juked, Emrys, New Ohio Review (forthcoming) and ARC (forthcoming).
 
“Sowing” first appeared in Volume 14 of JuxtaProse.