David Eye’s poem of shooting involves both literal and metaphorical guns.
—
Targets
A dead man in the basement
taped to the cinderblock wall
between two punching bags.
White lines on a black silhouette
like a map of the night sky.
Punctures in tight constellations:
House of Wound. Debilitate.
House of Shoot-to-Kill. You
taught me well. Every year
another caliber: .22, .38, .45.
In the field, yellowed papers
stapled to a box, rocks inside
to keep them up. Concentric
circles in a big black dot:
Bullseye. Bullseye. I’m 45
and now you shoot at me.
Letters fired off in your
slanted hand aim to revile
but even as you write, three
fingers are trained backward:
You with other women
in your sights. You banging
the neighbor in your house. You
finding my mother, Colt .45
in hand, about to take aim
at herself. I remember how
to inhale, hold, squeeze the trigger
on the out-breath. And after,
the pleasing tang of gunpowder
in the waft of gray-blue smoke.
***
Originally published, in a different form, in The Louisville Review (Vol. 70, Fall 2011).
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