dart

the dart left the hand of the expert player/and its tip clove the cork/within the quasi-trapezoidal section of the dartboard/that yielded a triple seventeen/to win the game

the dart quiesced in its foam-rubber nest while its owner and operator attempted to persuade/a much younger female in a cotton dress designed to reveal but not flaunt/to accompany him and his pickup truck to a nearby hotel

she declined

the dart next unseeingly saw the light of day/in the woods near a campground/where its owner, irritated by the rat-a-tat-tat of a woodpecker/decided to teach the woodpecker a lesson

but midmotion of the dart-launch that would have pierced the bird/where her spinal cord met her head/an artificial wasp plunged its titanium-alloyed stinger/into the dartsman’s throwing hand

the dart missed the tree altogether/and was abandoned by its owner/who drove himself one-handed to the hospital/where baffled surgeons removed his necrotized hand and half the adjacent forearm

while the operator of the artificial wasp sent a drone/to retrieve the fallen dart and bring it to her/for documentation/of a successful field test/of one of the newest weapons/developed by the department of defense

as for the wasp/it darted homeward as well