Monday, November 11, 2024

Emily's Guns


The prudent with a revolver
The loaded rifle by the door
The violent chambers
Of old New England wars
Make me think of Uncle Samuel’s guns
That lined the walls of his hunting lodge
Though I little thought Uncle Sam himself
prowled the corridors of his own brain
like Emily D. prowled hers
Looking for the relics: out of the New England rain.
A nullified wilderness long time gone
a narrative of captivity on the ottoman
the gun she’d finger in her mind
when her brother’s girlfriend came around.
Uncle Sam’s girlfriend found him
on his cedar plank floor
In the gun room where he finished up his own war..
Who has not thought with all the vengeance
Of a child confined to her room
Ot taking a mighty gun
And making the house a tomb.
- Karen Chamisso

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Emily's Guns

The prudent with a revolver The loaded rifle by the door The violent chambers Of old New England wars Make me think of Uncle Samuel’s guns ...