Untitled ("Men go hunting where I am from")
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker describes men hunting deer for a week's food and an uncle drinking white liquor. When men approach a cabin, the speaker gets a rifle, afraid the wooden cabin will go up in smoke.
The speaker begins by treating hunting as routine and ends with fear inside the cabin. The poem leaves the approaching men's purpose unstated, so their intentions cannot be supplied from the speaker's alarm.
The speaker says 'Men go hunting where I am from / It is not a big deal', describes a deer 'on a board that I clean', an uncle who 'drank alot of white liquer', and getting 'a rifel / when these sissy looking men / approached', ending 'Mostly I was terrified that this / virgin wood cabin would go up in smoke'.
Hunting is ordinary, and the threat comes from outsiders. The fear at the end is for the cabin, and the poem stops before saying what happened.