MAYDAY

BOLT ACTION: A LESSON IN DIFFICULT SUBJECTS by Maggie Glover

Contributed By:

The first time I shot your rifle, its recoil marked my chest—
not in watercolors as your thumbprints on my waist—
but in broken-vessel black, purple angering the wound-edges
while you taught me to decrease the impact,
pushing the butt into my shoulder. A friend once wrote:
a gun gives everyone potential (whether shooter or shot at,
you might—) and I thought of grasp
and its limits.  Literally, we can only hold onto so much
for so long. Tonight I wait beside you,
wakeful with amphetamine, counting the days it’s been
as though so much time spent skin to skin
could equal less consequence as our bodies are also weaponry,
loaded and quivering.  Of course I want to wake you, want you
to settle my jiggish bones into place:
solved, secured, complete. But if you understand
these mathematics, the probability of our aching,
how do you sleep?

Return to table of contents for Issue 3 Fall 2010

Filed Under: Poetry

Further Reading

Recluse
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GNOMIC SAVIORS: EDITORS ON EDITING – HOW DO EDITORS SELECT WORK FOR PUBLICATION?

Okla Elliott: What is the process by which your journal’s staff selects a piece for publication? Jodee Stanley: At Ninth Letter we have a fairly large editorial staff, with three faculty editors for fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, as well as several graduate students who work as readers and assistant editors. The selection process is pretty much the same […]