Gun Ode
A dollar with a gun in its mouth, a daisy with the sun in its mouth
Dream is a noun for possibilities, as in everything reminds me of threat
Learning to live in opposition, suspension, accretion, the catalogue of parts
to their parts––where have all the flowers gone?
Gun––what have you done to our bodies?
A ripping, then a keening sound, incredulous chalk marks in the square
If what you’ve got is a country sickness, seek the cause as the cure, push the paper
pace, register, register, dismantle the ‘gun figure’
My hands don’t fit the bitter hasp
As in, naked and afraid, without means of protection, they were forced
to love and evolve
O America, tired of being an ode, why don’t you ever use your Kevlar® shield?
O First Responder, thank you also for being America
Once in high school, going to a gun range somewhere in the oaky hills,
maybe it was a dump, it was foggy, Scott Carlton had an Uzi, and he
sprayed out a bloom of bullets that surprised us all, it was
foggy, the remains of the red squirrel glowing everywhere
If what you remember haunts you pop the ghost
If what you’ve got is a problem wrapped in prayer, dismantle the problem’s
conflation, unwrap the ammo from the prayer
Gun––
breathe back your noxious vapor, unstain the trigger finger, clear the site, friend up
a glory in something other than a flag
What would that look like, sound like, taste like?
This is not a memory I am not a shooter,
I am not afraid, my shoulder’s on the wheel, everyday
But them Russians, them Russians, and them Oligarchs, too, not your
huddled masses shot in their Sunday pews
Unbolt Unbolt Unbolt Unbolt
If what you’ve got is a trunk full of weapons, disperse them, spend them
in flowers
Recall Recall Recall Recall Recall
Whose hands need harms, a militia, these times? A queer shoulder
and a disabled wheel, melanin stupidly caught in the wheel
As in, America, you’re the safest country in the world from foreign intrusion––
Pearl Harbor? 9/11?
Compare that with, well, just about anywhere…
Why do we need a gun?
Exactly who are we fighting if the enemy is within?
Beretta Bersa Smith & Wesson
Browning Colt Mossberg Glock
Ban Ban Ban Ban Ban
I shot a blue jay once with a pellet gun, it sickened me for an hour
as I watched it die in the rotty creek behind my house
If a vision of earth, all of ours, now and eventually, if the color of dust
and pollen, everyone’s dust and pollen
I mean, all or nothing, will the American dog ode eat its foot?
Ban Ban Ban Ban Ban
I am writing this poem in the pall of fresh sulfur, another school,
another disheveled disgruntled white guy––to say it––a cut cut cut
like a rat-a-tat-tat, the vermin high in the sky or behind the wheel
If a more general male viciousness, then something to control
that that that that that
What can we grow in a garden with too many holes?
Remington Ruger Savage Steyr
Winchester Uzi Sig Sauer
Drop your weapons! Disarm your alarms!
A kid at camp––Friendly Pines––lost an eye one summer
in the mountains of Arizona, a .22, I think his name was Derrick
Mitch, an old friend, he drifted, dropped out––I heard he got shot robbing
a liquor store, near Fresno
My wife’s best friend fought demons, he lost, he blew his head off with a
shotgun in November, his name was John
I can’t think of one happy memory ever associated with a gun
Disarm Disarm Disarm Disarm
If the impulse to destruction is greater than the insight to love, we are
doomed to a garden of graves
If freedom is money spent on guns, what is American grace?
Gun—
your time is waning
In the stupid west wind you are rising against yourself
I am not a shooter, I am not afraid, I gather my army of flowers
––a dollar with a dream in its mouth
a daisy with the sun in its mouth
Late Music
Feeling the lonesome sky on a long drive home, you make it so
First frost, and the Black-eyed Susans staring, apparently
“Existence precedes Essence,” he said, we say
Soon you will feel a foreboding in the Winter you have conceived
pain in the belly, a weather map of the eastern seaboard, organ
music grinding the Messiah, a child
on a curb covered in powder
white, the film clip slcks ominously, see?
Rain follows fire turns to snow of ash
White, what have we done to Civilization?
There is no snowman you have not rolled from memory
Naturally, you can’t always be reasonable, Humanism is
what humans do
Wash the blood from your hands
Walk to the distant farmhouse covered in frost
Spring, you pack, make a pact, choose murder, lust, compassion, shame
There is no such thing as not choosing
Time, and Its Monument
In the long run recurrence
The stacking of shells
Days certain seasons
The steeple accrues
Those spaces and structures
To seem so essential
Gather a stop time
Clearing or wall or well
A place of their own
Generally divine powers
Scattered in rows
Streets of dominion
The adoration of earth
A mineral thirst
Every space is limited
Sky or the human group
To defy gravity towers
A message to night
In the long run recurrence
What stands up
For more from Matthew Cooperman check out this January 2019 interview by Michael M. Weinstein or his webpage.
