Meditation at Fifty Yards, Moving Target

Safety First.

Never point your weapon, keep your finger

off the trigger. Assume a loaded barrel,

even when it isn’t, especially when you know it isn’t.

Glocks are lightweight but sensitive;

the Keltec has a long pull and a kick.

Rifles have penetrating power, viz.:

if the projectile doesn’t lodge in its mark,

it will travel some distance

until it finds shelter; it will certainly

pierce your ordinary drywall partition.

You could wound the burglar and kill your child

sleeping in the next room, all with one shot.

Open Air.

Fear, of course. Then the sudden

pleasure of heft—as if the hand

had always yearned for this solemn

fit, this gravitas, and now had found

its true repose.

Don’t pull the trigger, squeeze it—

squeeze between heartbeats.

Look down the sights. Don’t

hold your breath. Don’t hold

anything, just stop breathing.

Level the scene with your eyes. Listen.

Soft, now: squeeze.

Gender Politics.

Guys like noise: rapid fire,

thunk-and-slide of a blunt-nose silver Mossberg,

or double-handed Colts, slugging it out from the hips.

Rambo or cowboy, they’ll whoop it up.

Women are fewer, more elegant.

They prefer precision:

tin cans swing-dancing in the trees,

the paper bull’s-eye’s tidy rupture at fifty yards.

(Question: If you were being pursued,

how would you prefer to go down—

ripped through a blanket of fire

or plucked by one incandescent

fingertip?)

The Bullet.

dark dark no wind no heaven

i am not anything not borne on air i bear

myself i can slice the air no wind

can hold me let me let me

go i can see yes

o aperture o light let me off

go off straight is my verb straight

my glory road yes now i can feel

it the light i am flame velocity o

beautiful body i am coming i am yours

before you know it

i am home

Source: American Smooth (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004)