The Sniper and the Spotter

On recoil, your spotter would see if your target fell,
or, if you missed, the direction he moved next;
the best not afraid to keep his head up in combat.

Now that you shoot photographs instead,
I’m your spotter. With your latest images
spread over my kitchen table, I help you see
what is and isn’t working.

I feel a bit of the spotter’s complicity,
when I insist your kills, your regrets
are in your shots, exposing contrast,
focusing your instincts toward available light.

Too restless to sit as I add ham hocks to soup,
dice onions, you aim through my window
at mountains bisected by a pin oak’s limb.
Seventy percent of snipers lefties,

you say, left trigger finger,
spent casings flying hot
against your face or down your shirt.

Looping your camera strap over my neck,
you tell me to look through its viewfinder,
everything reddish from its filter, a bull’s eye
over whatever I scope. You offer me a camera

and I feel my heart race,
my chest take the deep breath you’ve described
to steady your aim, especially on a long shot.

“The Sniper and the Spotter,” a sample poem from The Sniper and the Spotter, by Karen Zealand.

Chapbook, poetry.
Foreword by Stephen Dobyns.
Chosen by Stephen Dobyns as winner of the Third Annual Camber Press Poetry Chapbook Award.
33 pages, 22 poems.
Saddle stitch binding.
Four-color cover, acid-free paper throughout.
ISBN 0-9727455-7-2

Price: $8.00
Shipping and handling: $2.00

Camber Press accepts orders via e-commerce. Alternatively, you can pay by check. Please make payable to Camber Press, Inc. and send to this address. Either way, your books will be sent to you via USPS, First Class mail, in a bubblewrap-padded envelope. Thank you.