The Conservationist

From a fence, buzzards counted cows, saw everything as soppressata. You’re in cornhole
tournament country now. Weeds sprouted from the piss spot. Wild horses watched me
wrestle death beside a river. I knew he was nearby when I found the dark ocean of a wolf
freshly broken in the underbrush. Tied into a circle at the tails, the horses turned like a slow
& semisolid gear. I had him on the ground in a headlock & his sweat tasted heartsick. The
horses swung away from the river & back into the fields like a Ferris wheel fighting on its
side & filthy. The few wolves left were waiting for the moon to give their breath back. It
snowed only on the small mesas surrounding the shore. Death ran to his raft & started rowing
with a ghost crab, which I watched like a cowboy who looks sleepy for a living, bleeding
gobs of Boyardee. The wolves sucked in their sounds & buzzards glowed blue. Now the horses
were a single thing. They said, “Let’s put away our wandering.” I curled up close with
the cows & all evening we listened to the corn ache.

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Chad Foret is a writer and editor from SE Louisiana. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in december, Fairy Tale Review, Barrelhouse, EarShrub, a Connecticut Summerfest musical composition by Nicole Knorr, and other journals and anthologies. He is the author of Scenes from a Rain Country (Lavender Ink, 2022) and Lost Films (Osmanthus, 2025). Visit www.chadforet.com or follow @chad4a on Instagram for more info and updates.