Texas Tall Tale Poem by Juan Olivarez

We Texans
Love to hunt.
Rabbits, birds, big game,
You name it,
We hunt it.

Our rabbits here
Are six feet tall,
And one hundred fifty pounds.
Our doves so big
They are like clouds
Blocking out the sun.

Once hunting rabbits
The Texas kind
That we call
Jackelopes, I seed one
With two foot horns.

Just as I was drawing a bead
On him,
He sprang over
An old barbed wire fence
Into another pasture.

Of course I followed
Leaving my double barreled
Zavala Eibar
Reclining against a fence post
While I scaled the fence
With my bare hands.

It took me
A couple of minutes of climblng
Because I was bending the barbs
With my fingers
As I went.

Just then
A Texas gulley washer
Broke right overhead.
Texas gulley washers drop
Twelve inches of rain
But clear up in two minutes.

Anyway
By the time
I got to the other side
I realized that it had only
Rained on the original pasture
The one I was in now
Was completely dry.

So when I retrieved
My shotgun
I was not surprised to find
One barrel full of rain water
And the other barrel bone dry.

Since my shotgun
Was unusable
I had to run down
The Jackelope
And beat it to death
With my fists.
Sure was tender.

5/25/14
ALTON TEXAS