Samuel Ace (left) has published widely in periodicals and journals. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Normal Sex (Firebrand Books) and Home in three days. Don’t wash. (Hard Press). He is a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant and winner of the Astraea Lesbian Writer’s Fund Prize in Poetry, The Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in poetry. He lives in Tucson, AZ and Truth or Consequences, NM.
Maureen Seaton (right) is the author of over a dozen books, most recently, Fibonacci Batman: New & Selected, 1991-2011 (Carnegie Mellon, 2013). Her awards include the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, an NEA fellowship, and the Pushcart Prize. She lives in Hollywood, FL and Albuquerque, NM. maureenseaton.com
About Collaboration on “Hunting Season in Florida”
“Hunting Seaton in Florida” was composed collaboratively in late November 2011, number 70 of 90 poems written that year and into the next in an almost daily email correspondence. Our only parameter for the project was no parameters, our plan, no plan— or the plan from something beyond us individually, the daily tap of energy, sprung from one mind to another, found in an inbox. This gift came innocent (mostly) of guile—the perfect prompt. Proof that daily-ness was anything but. Comfort in the spectacular and regular undercurrent of events, consciousness, and poetry.
Samuel Ace and Maureen Seaton are long-time friends and have been collaborating for the past five years. They are currently working on their second book, a multi-media project of prose and poetry, of which “Hunting Season…” is a part. Their first, Stealth, was published by Chax Press in 2011.
Hunting Season in Florida
Nov. 19 – Jan. 1: Antlerless deer may be taken by all legal centerfire rifles and pistols, shotguns, muzzleloaders, crossbows and bows; antlered deer, entire season.
Lessons for getting out alive:
Don’t wear hats
Don’t wear brown
Don’t wear leisure
Don’t wear angora
Don’t wear corners
Don’t wear carving
Don’t wear schools
Don’t wear cries
Don’t wear suntans
Don’t wear forage
Don’t wear triumph
Don’t wear masters
I tried deer meat when I was in fourth grade.
It tasted like a deer.
I don’t like the sound of guns going off while I’m trying to write in a forest.
Once my boyfriend who later shot himself in the head for obvious reasons told me
(convincingly, I might add) that it is sometimes kinder to kill.
I don’t really understand hunting. Or golf.
Kinder
to sell
the carving
knife
than to
endure
They ate
strudel
after coming
to America
My mother
waved a
white napkin
to get
the waiter’s
attention
Cruelty
opened
him to
cellars
Soap and
water
would not
remove
the rot
She glared
at him
when he
brought
cold coffee
Sipping
one
version
of one
story
Angels
will arrive
They still
looked down
on their
neighbors
Later
he crawled
without doctrine
through palmettos
picked oranges
locked lies
in blue water
one heron
floating
on the river
battered
to the sound of applause
Panhandler Magazine 