We send arrows keening into hay bales,
white paper outlines pinned across them.
We take turns hefting the bow, 
knocking feathered shaft to string.

My release is tentative, always missing 
the precision of my brother
who aims and fires with ease.

Framed in effluvial light, his shadow careening
with an arrow's lightness across the garden
or turning, taunting my attempts to match him.

At his hip a hunting knife. The spread
of his lips curling thinly up.

//Isaac Ginsberg Miller is a PhD Candidate in African American Studies at Northwestern University, where he is also a member of the Poetry and Poetics Graduate Cluster. His chapbook Stopgap won The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Chapbook Contest and was published in 2019.