Kieron Walquist
—
What Hunts Us Back
November 13th, 2019 – A video circulating social media Wednesday suggested a mountain lion was recently spotted near the Menards on Stonecreek Drive.
Using life-sized cutouts as confirmation, agents from the Missouri Department of Conservation said the animal seen in the video is not a cougar.
—KRCG 13
What about Twehous, their years of drilling + dynamite?
The acres knocked down for the new Sam’s Club?
+ the tracks found on Campbell’s farm, bigger than any housecat or coyote?
The calf dragged off pasture?
[Poor limbs pretzeled.]
What about the footage from Randy’s trail cam?
[That low slink + shudder of beige. Those great green eyes.]
What about 2008, the lion bulldozed near Fulton, curling fender with fur?
[Its terrifying majesty the first thing you see at the Runge Center.]
+ the flyers, all those dogs, tacked on Moser’s bulletin board?
Why do the men carry a pistol when entering the mines at Hwy 63 Quarry?
That morning something rode the wind other than fog?
The morning a woman caterwauled, wrapped birdsong inside-out.
What about the doe discovered up in a walnut tree, its carcass a chandelier?
+ the night the neighborhood dogs wouldn’t stop barking.
Kieron Walquist is a queer autistic poet and hillbilly from Missouri. His work appears/is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2022, IHLR, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, and others. He received his MFA in Poetry from Washington University in St. Louis and is currently a 2022-2023 FAWC Fellow.
© Bear Review 2025
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Site Design + Build
October Associates
