I just want to start out by saying fuck trophy hunters. I’m all for hunting, and I don’t hate the second amendment, but when it comes to trophy hunting, I’m 100 percent against it. There’s absolutely no reason to take pride in shooting beautiful animals for the sake of shooting them, to boost your ego, to compensate for something else.

If you want to go into the woods and hunt a deer or any other animal in abundance for food, go for it. If you have plans to make use of as much of the animal you kill as possible, I get it. But to kill a leopard or a giraffe or a family of baboons simply to pose in a picture with a shit-eating grin to trigger the entire world is where I draw the line.

Did you all see the latest “hunter” that killed an entire family of baboons and bragged about it in an email to his friends and colleagues? At this point, he must’ve known that the emails would leak and he’d get all the attention he’s been so desperately craving for his entire life. I know this guy will never see this, but on the off chance he does, and you’re reading this: fuck you.

Trophy Hunters

How does it feel
killing
an entire family,
defenseless,
unaware,
unlike you,
from a distance,
no skill necessary?

Did the children scream,
as they watched
their parents die,
or did you spare them,
by shooting them first?
Did you care,
or smile that same
shit-eating grin
in your emails?

I’m sure you think
kill or be killed,
but if you were stuck
with your family
in East New York
or the South Bronx
or Crown Heights
or Jamaica,

you wouldn’t think
it’s okay if God
forbid anything
happened to you
or your family.

Submissions

If you’re interested in submitting your own poetry to Come and Go Literary, see my submission guidelines for more details — unless you’re a trophy hunter. I’m sure Fox News would love to read about your story.