RAW STUFF

by Carolyn Gregory



Their guns become their dolls,
each with a girl's name on it
and carved tattoo
they caress and polish
like vintage cars

With summer on their hands
and nothing playing at the movies
after the slasher film goes
the way of its bloody machete,

they train on tin cans
popping off little soldiers
on a fence,
steady as she comes
before antlers and coyotes follow --
no time for sentiment

Back with their kill,
they puff up chests and strut
as they continue
making men out of raw stuff,
rifle in a backpack,
Glock in a leather pocket.


Carolyn Gregory's poems and essays on music have been published in American Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Bellowing Ark, Seattle Review, and Stylus. She was featured in For Lovers and Other Losses. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2011 and is a past recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council award. Her book, Open Letters, was published by Windmill Editions in 2009 and her next, Facing the Music, in 2012. She has been working on a series about the history of guns in America for several years now.

CONFUSED

by Eloise Bruce

The bottom of the ad reads, "If it's good enough for the professional, it's good enough for you." Image source: Business Insider.

When you relish Mossberg, Rock River and Rugger
how do we know if you are a good man or a bad man?
Maybe of two minds, you are a good man who kills the bad man

or vice versa?  Are you the kind of man following orders
to shoot students to death in Kent Ohio.
Are you an autistic boy with an AR-15 assault rifle

or a crazy man or maybe a bad woman
with a sig Sauer semiautomatic?
You can get an assault weapon in mossy oak pink camouflage.

Are you wearing a uniform or a badge
and aiming a Glock 9-millimeter while worshipping
the Berretta, Bushmaster, Colt?

Are you armed like the deputy
was at Columbine?  Did you fire at the bad boy?
Did you miss? did he miss?


Eloise Bruce’s book Rattle was published by CavenKerry Press, and she is a member of the poetry and performance group Cool Women.  She has been involved with Playwrights Theatre’s initiative for Poetry Out Loud from its beginning in 2005.  A a Teaching Artist in schools throughout New Jersey, she focuses on poetry and theatre. She teaches for the Arts and Education Center working with middle school writers.  A fellow with the Cloud Institute for Sustainable Education, Bruce is currently working with Young Audiences of New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania on Beyond Recycling, a project allowing children to explore sustainability through the arts.

PUSH & PULL

by Judith Terzi

Metro Station, Pasadena, CA. Image source: The Old Pasadena Blog

Push to open the gate. Empuje para abrir.
Look both ways before crossing the tracks.
Do not enter while the bells are active.
Search for invisible things: Higg's boson,
a wish inside a Bushmaster. Grief. Kill me
softly with a Venti. Head straight home
in your penny loafers, stiff striped shirt.
Free People jeans, Citizen of Humanity.
Not Your Daughter's Jeans. Oh not your
mother's guns. Search for the invisible.
A secret inside a Glock. Wounds inside
the shells. Despair inside terror. Courage
inside despair. Radiance inside a law.
Grief. Lick the latte. Dunk the Madeleine.
Pull to open the gate. Jale para abrir.


Judith Terzi is a poet living in Southern California where she taught high school French for many years. Her poetry has received nominations for Best of the Net and Web and awards and recognition from journals such as dotdotdash, Mad Hatters', and Newport Review. Poems are forthcoming in American Society: What Poets See(FutureCycle Press), Poetry Project Erotic Poem Anthology (Tupelo Press), and elsewhere. Sharing Tabouli was published by Finishing Line in 2011.