From the Poetry Editor: An Interjection in Time of Mourning
I don’t need to remind you of what poetry does to help us live our lives; I know you know that very well indeed. But here is an interjection of my own, at a time when we are simultaneously mourning the horrific recent gun deaths and trying to rally ourselves to activity and legislation.
I know something about guns. Shocking as it seems to me now, I participated regularly in target practice, with a 22 rifle, at summer camp when I was ten years old. It was a regularly scheduled activity, like basket-weaving, and I looked forward to it eagerly, even to the point of winning certificates of marksmanship, awarded by –yes – the N.R.A. Years later, I began to publish poetry.
My second collection, At the Fortune Café (Snake Nation Press, 2005), contains a poem called “The Holster.” My fourth, Reminder, (as yet unpublished), has one called “Training.” I want to share them both with you now, when I daresay they may be needed. I’m sure you will see why I put them in the following order:
Training
Lily, in the workshop,
worries about her grandkids –
that loaded hunting rifle
in her daughter’s house.
“It’s there,” her son-in-law says,
to teach them not to touch.
“Remember how I trained
the big dog, Mack, not to
jump for steak?”
Now, in Assisted Living,
Lily tries to learn.
She wants to bring
the grandkids here,
let them listen as we
read poems.
The Holster
Five, I would have shot,
had there been a gun
in the shiny leather holster
I came across that morning
in my father’s dresser drawer
and took down to the street
to show off to the kids
I surely would have shot
had there been a gun –
not because I had
a grudge or any need –
but just to hear the shots,
to see my friends fall down
and, laughing, run away
as they had always done
and would have too that day.
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor